Rose, who was more sensitive and less observant, gave her mother more trouble than the others, but she acquiesced at last, that God must know best, though it all seemed rather funny. They were not to earn their own livings because later on--(later on being the term in which the Pinsent parents envisaged their retreat from this world) they would have plenty of money; but they were expected to develop hobbies. The eldest girls developed splendid hobbies. Agatha, who was the plainest of the three, became a lawn tennis champion with a really smashing serve. Edith distinguished herself by writing a history of one of our western counties. She rode all over it on a bicycle and stayed at vicarages by herself. She earned a hundred pounds by this adventure and had a particularly pleasant notice in the “Spectator.” Rose was rather slower at taking anything up. She had had pneumonia when she was at school, and it had left her nominally but not at all obstructively delicate. She played an excellent game of hockey and was her father’s favorite. It was really for Rose’s sake that they all decided to go to Rome. They thought Rose would almost certainly settle down to something after that, and it would be good for Edith, who, now she had finished Somersetshire, might like to begin on Rome. She could at any rate compare the different types of architecture. A friend of hers, a Mr. Bunning, said there wasn’t any architecture in Rome, but you could never be quite sure what Mr. Bunning meant. Edith hadn’t been quite sure for several years--nor apparently had Mr. Bunning, but perhaps their going to Rome might help him to find out. Agatha was very good-natured about it; she said she thought Rome would do as well as anywhere else. The Pinsents were a most accommodating family and though, of course, they sometimes quarreled, it was all in a loud, direct, natural way, which generally ended in chaff. They never quarreled with Rose as much as with each other because of her having been rather delicate, still they chaffed her a good deal. She wouldn’t have liked it if they hadn’t. They knew they weren’t like other families of their class and standing; they prided themselves on talking to people in railway carriages and even crossing the Channel. Of course, they were particularly good sailors but even if they hadn’t been they would have been nice and friendly and not at all stuck up about being sick. Agatha was thinking of marrying a Canadian who took most magnificent back-handers, Edith was still wondering what Mr. Bunning meant, but Rose was perfectly free. She’d had two proposals, but both of them had been from men she had known all her life and liked most awfully--but not in that way. So that she’d had, as Mrs. Pinsent put it to her husband, “quite a lot of experience for twenty-one and none of the bother of it.” Mr. Pinsent growled and said that if Rose married the right kind of man she never would have any bother.