really like.  I told him what I thought about the lower classes.  One can talk to him.  I hate father’s way of making feeble little jokes, as if nothing were serious.  I said I didn’t think it was any use to dabble; we ought to go to the root of everything.  I said that money and class distinctions are two bogeys we have got to lay.  Martin says, when it comes to real dealing with social questions and the poor, all the people we know are amateurs.  He says that we have got to shake ourselves free of all the old sentimental notions, and just work at putting everything to the test of Health.  Father calls Martin a ‘Sanitist’; and Uncle Hilary says that if you wash people by law they’ll all be as dirty again tomorrow....”

Thyme paused again.  A blackbird in the garden of the Square was uttering a long, low, chuckling trill.  She ran to the window and peeped out.  The bird was on a plane-tree, and, with throat uplifted, was letting through his yellow beak that delicious piece of self-expression.  All things he seemed to praise—­the sky, the sun, the trees, the dewy grass, himself: 

‘You darling!’ thought Thyme.  With a shudder of delight she dropped her notebook back into the drawer, flung off her nightgown, and flew into her bath.

That same morning she slipped out quietly at ten o’clock.  Her Saturdays were free of classes, but she had to run the gauntlet of her mother’s liking for her company and her father’s wish for her to go with him to Richmond and play golf.

For on Saturdays Stephen almost always left the precincts of the Courts before three o’clock.  Then, if he could induce his wife or daughter to accompany him, he liked to get a round or two in preparation for Sunday, when he always started off at half-past ten and played all day.  If Cecilia and Thyme failed him, he would go to his club, and keep himself in touch with every kind of social movement by reading the reviews.

Thyme walked along with her head up and a wrinkle in her brow, as though she were absorbed in serious reflection; if admiring glances were flung at her, she did not seem aware of them.  Passing not far from Hilary’s, she entered the Broad Walk, and crossed it to the farther end.

On a railing, stretching out his long legs and observing the passers-by, sat her cousin, Martin Stone.  He got down as she came up.

“Late again,” he said.  “Come on!”

“Where are we going first?” Thyme asked.

“The Notting Hill district’s all we can do to-day if we’re to go again to Mrs. Hughs’.  I must be down at the hospital this afternoon.”

Thyme frowned.  “I do envy you living by yourself, Martin.  It’s silly having to live at home.”

Martin did not answer, but one nostril of his long nose was seen to curve, and Thyme acquiesced in this without remark.  They walked for some minutes between tall houses, looking about them calmly.  Then Martin said:  “All Purceys round here.”