When I went to bed and thought over what Ross had said I remembered that once when we were children, he and I and Eustace were taken round the National Gallery by Aunt Constance, and Ross came up to me privately and said ’Meg, I can’t stand all these saints and Madonnas, and the paintings of Him are beastly, why, they’re only women with beards. They’re not a bit like the picture of Him that’s in my head,’ said the little chap with a proud tilt to his chin. ’What’s your picture of Him like, Ross?’ I remember asking. ’On a horse, of course, with a sword and crown like it tells you in the Revelation.’ And then, for that masculine English horror of ’talking religion’ was developed strongly in him even at that early age, he wouldn’t say any more, only, ’Let’s come and see if we can find some lions!’ When daddy came in to wish me ’good-night’ he said that Uncle Jasper was still in a most frightful bate with Eustace about ’this idea that he has got into his head,’ and that Eustace has agreed to wait a year or two before chucking up the army. I can’t understand my cousin. Last time I saw him his young man’s fancy had lightly turned to thoughts of loving me. Now he desires a Monkery. But which is ’the idea’? that’s the question that I felt would keep me awake all night. Has he really a vocation? If so, I suppose I was merely a kind of centipede that got, for a moment, into his sponge. Time alone will give the answer. But, oh dear me, I didn’t keep awake all night. I only wish I had. Instead, I had a most appalling nightmare. I dreamed that Ross was going into a nunnery. He would do it, in spite of all I said to him. I found myself in the passage in floods of tears, hammering on his door and sobbing, ’Oh, don’t, don’t. Think of the privations.’ The next moment I was on my own bed with Ross and father beside me. ’Am I dying?’ I asked, seeing my family gathered round my couch. ’Dying!’ said my brother, giving me a shake with one hand and a stick of chocolate with the other, ’it’s we who are dying, with laughter.’ ’I thought you were going into a nunnery,’ I wailed, ’and——’ ’And very nice too,’ said Ross, ’if I had a nice little nun to cuddle.’ That woke me right up. I don’t know how my brother can say such things! Father says that really some of the family jokes _can’t_ go in my novel. But I can scratch them out after. *CHAPTER X* It’s a whole month since I wrote a chapter of my book. I don’t seem to have had much time lately, although I know we all have all the time there is, as the Bishop reminded the lady who complained that she had not had enough in which to say her prayers! And now it is full spring and the woods are a pageant of flowers, and there is a glory of green over the garden. It is warm like summer and the nights are still, and that wondrous thing called ’Love’ has come to me. I wish that I could get its fragrance down and put into my book something of its perfection.