Naomi's sweet and candid mind, without poring over the matter at all, has, one feels, submitted life and all its phenomena to a reasonable evaluation. She understands: in a word, accepts. It is indeed a special prerogative of even stupid women to do this simply. The last thing that men learn about women is how transparent and natural they really are in all the essentials, our delay being due largely to our own want of imagination and not a little to the circumstance that we are brought up to expect freakishness, insincerity, and mischief. Proverbial lore, the testimony of so much literature, and the whole tendency of national facetiousness run that way. And yet few intelligent men individually would support it from their own knowledge, and most would say that among their least admirable and most ridiculous moments were those which they had once spent in protecting their wives or sweethearts (to use a better word than fiancées) from possibilities of offence in public places. Women are far nearer nature than men: so near, indeed, that one suspects that the inventor of most of the superficial proprieties was not Mrs. Grundy but her husband. Naomi has no vocation. The eight years intervening between her birth and that of Drusilla made all the difference, and it is as natural for the elder sister never to have learned, say, typewriting, as it is for the younger to learn painting in Gower Street. But Naomi is by far the busier. She is, indeed, always employed, either indoors or out. She does the shopping, decides the menu, writes most of the letters, engages servants, and pays the calls. Those are her family duties. Her own tastes run in the direction of what is called charity, but to them she herself would never give that word. The number of her pensioners (and I might say subjects or worshippers) no one probably will ever know. They are not by any means all in want of material help, the only benefaction she offers beneath many roofs being the bounty of her smile and cheerfulness. She makes a point, for example, of retaining knowledge of the Queen Anne's Gate servants after they leave, which they do only to be married and have fat and happy babies with punctuality and dispatch for Miss Naomi to play with and befriend. There are three such servants at this moment in various parts of London whose babies are visited regularly; but Frank's twins naturally come first. Then there is a hospital at which Naomi attends, and a girls' club of which she is the treasurer; and of course she has a retinue of "chars" and sewing women.