As we went downstairs I was rather glad of being able to disagree with him about something. It would keep me from being foolish. I had that feeling of the creature who has been straining long at bonds, and finds the sudden loosing a test of equilibrium. For fear I should seem too gloriously content with him, I taxed Eric with thinking over much about money. He said a man may put up with any sort of hardship he likes for himself. But no man had a right to marry till he could support a wife in some sort of comfort. I suggested that perhaps Maggie Annan cared less about comfort than she cared about other things. He retorted that Maggie probably hadn't thought it out at all. She was acting on impulse. "To think it out--that was the man's business." And so on. I felt myself growing impatient when he said "comfort" for the second time. "When people are old, yes! 'Comfort' then. But when they're young, what _does_ it matter?" He leaned against the newel of the staircase and looked at me, quite surprised. "I thought you were more practical," he said. "I _am_ practical. That's why I say comfort is wasted on the young. They don't even want it--unless they're rather horrid sort of young people." "Thank you," he said, laughing, and I felt hot. I tried to explain. Such a lot of things were fun when you were young, especially when they were shared. I had noticed that. Things that made you cross, and made you ill when you were older---- Suddenly I stopped, saying in my heart: "Heavens! isn't this the kind of foolishness I was hoping to be saved from? Or is it worse?..." For Eric was smiling in such a disconcerting way. I said primly that Miss Maggie did not need me to defend her, and that I must not keep him from his work. That word was like the touch of a whip. In two seconds he was gone. The next day, Monday, just the same. He ran in only for a moment to see my mother. He could not sit down; he could not do this, nor that. Work, work! It had seized him in a fresh grip. I was thankful to the work for having carried him away that Monday afternoon, when Betty came back from seeing the Helmstones off. It was a Betty we had never seen before. I don't know what else Hermione had said to her, but Betty had been told that she, too, might have gone yachting. It was like a stab to see my mother's face now, and to remember the confidence with which she had quoted the old story about Bettina's insisting on the promise that she should not be made to pay visits: "Not _never_?" "Not never!" I had hated Lady Helmstone for saying that Bettina would, in her ladyship's opinion, be found to have outgrown her reluctance. It was true. Bettina wanted to go! My mother, unwisely I felt, reminded Betty of the old pledge. "I was a baby then. What did I know?" And now there were tears in Bettina's eyes because she was _not_ going to leave her mother. * * * * *