"Do you mean Mamma's?" Judith asked. Mr. Challis had not, and hesitated a moment. Should he say, "Miss Sibyl's"? Surely no! Sunday citizens would say that. Very well, then! Should it be "Sibyl's" or "Your sister's"? He almost wished the young females of this landed family were _ladyships_: it comes so much handier for outsiders. He risked the point, and said, "Sibyl's," but softened the offence by adding, "Your sister's, I mean." If the fine eyelids were offended, they concealed it remarkably well. So much so that Mr. Challis said to himself that no doubt the Normans Christian-named more than the Saxons. Or, were those eyelids lenient towards his personal self? He was a married man, certainly; only, then!--a married man may feel flattered, look you! But this is not our affair at present. How about the Great Idea? "Sibyl's idea, of course." The speaker accepted the Christian name; she could have said "My sister's" stiffly. "It's a perfectly mad one. A sort of new Factory, or perhaps I ought to say Institution. Everything is to be made there, only nobody is to be allowed to work there who is qualified to do anything else." "Anything else than what?" "Why--don't you understand? Arts and crafts. Enamels and lace and tapestry and hammered brass and copper. Not manufactures--mediæval things...." "Oh, ah!--I know." "All that sort of thing. Well!--the Great Idea is to take either some premises of the proper sort, or a piece of land and build a Factory, with studios for herself and Lady Betty Inglis; she must be in it to make Sir Spender Inglis, who's enormously rich, find half the capital. I've done _my_ best ... to prevent it. But it's no use my saying anything. Will keeps her up to it." "Your brother?" "Yes. You see, he's been looking into the question of building, and is certain he could build at half the usual cost. So he wants to try his hand on the Factory." "Poor Sir Spender!" "That's what I say. And poor Papa! However, that's not Will's only reason. He wants to build some workshops for himself to carry out experiments in wireless high-tension currents and aerostation. _I_ don't understand these things." "Your brother seems a universal genius, too?" "Yes. But then, he took a very high degree at Cambridge. He always has that excuse. Sibyl has no degree, and ought to know better." "What exactly is going to be done at the Factory? And are all the hands to be ladies? Or how?" "Very much 'how?' I should say. The idea is, to employ no one who can do anything else anywhere else. People with one hand or one eye. Colour-blind guards who can't get places on railways. Deaf and dumb people that can read the Scriptures aloud automatically and never be any the wiser, don't you know?" "Was that what your brother was talking about to your sister"--in this exact context "Sibyl" would hardly have worked in--"last night? About a blind chap he told her of. She thought he might be taught to model."