"If she is allowed to do it! But what if there is a chain around her neck, in the shape of some relation who thinks that her work is to be an understudy at home? What would Mrs Mallison have to say to wide possibilities, while she wants a daughter to run messages and arrange the flowers? What would _you_ have said in the days when you needed Katrine, if she had talked of her life's work? Her work was obviously to darn your socks until such time as you found someone else whom you liked better, when--pouf!"--she snapped her fingers--"enough of Katrine! Let her go out into the wilds, and see what she can find!" "Well! She very speedily found something that she liked better. Katrine was not a happy illustration, young woman! In your ever-present desire to be personal, you overlooked--" "Exceptions prove the rule," Grizel said stubbornly. "Besides, we were not discussing Katrine, we were discussing the roast-fowl dinner. Two Mallisons, the Hunters, Captain Peignton. Who else? We might as well make it up to ten while we are about it." Martin suggested the name of some young people whose parents had already entertained himself and his wife, and Grizel sighed, a long sigh of resignation. "What shall we do with them afterwards?" "Talk." "They can't talk, bless you! Don't know how." "Then you must talk to them." "I can't. A dull dinner party pumps me dry, and I simply cannot stand desultory drawls for an hour on top of it. I get fidgets, and yawn,-- heavens, how I yawn! It's not a mite of use telling me not to. I _must_. If I swallow them down my nose swells, and my eyes fill. I look as if I had hay fever... Do you never get fidgets at a dull party?" "Mental?" "No. Physical. In your legs. Far worse! They won't keep still. I've lived through some shocking hours.--I'd rather play puss-in-the-corner, than talk twaddle for an hour on end." "I should thoroughly enjoy seeing Mary Mallison playing puss-in-the-corner," Martin declared, and beat a hasty retreat. Experience had proved that it was a colossal mistake to endeavour to change Grizel's mind. The most convincing of arguments had no power to move her; while moral axioms sent her galloping headlong in the opposite direction to that in which she was directed; moreover, it was a waste of energy to essay the task, since her rebellions were but word deep, and the passage of a short half-hour was usually sufficient to disperse them, and restore her to her usual complacent radiance.