"Are you going to marry Miss Hamilton?" Harold actually wanted to know one evening. He had recently been snubbed for asking the company what was the difference between gestation and digestion, and was determined to produce a conundrum that could not be evaded by telling him that he would not understand the answer. John's solution was to look at his watch and say it was time for him and Bertram to be in bed, hoping that Bertram would take it out of his cousin for calling attention to their existence. One of Bertram's first measures at Ambles had been to muffle, impede, disorganize and finally destroy the striking of the drawing-room clock. When this had been accomplished he could count every night on a few precious minutes snatched from the annihilation of bed during which he sat mute as a mummy in a kind of cataleptic ecstasy. The betrayer of this profound peace sullenly gathered up the rubbish with which he was wont to litter the room every night, and John saw Bertram's eye flash like a Corsican sharpening the knife of revenge. But whatever was in store for Harold lacked savor when John heard from the group of mothers, aunts, sisters, and sisters-in-law the two words "Children know" dying away in a sibilance of affirmative sighs. After that it was small consolation to hear a scuffle outside in the hall followed by the crash of Harold's dispersed collections and a wail of protest. For the sake of a childish quarrel Hilda and Eleanor were not going to break up the alliance to which they were now definitely committed. "It's so nice for poor Harold to have Bertram to play with him," volunteered one mother. "Yes, and it's nice for Bertram too, because Harold's such a little worker," the other agreed. Even George's opaque eyes glimmered with an illusion of life when he heard his wife praise her nephew; she had not surprised him so completely since on a wet afternoon, thirteen years ago, she accepted his hand. It was even obvious to Edith that she must begin to think about taking sides; and, having exhausted her intelligence by this discovery, she had not enough wit left to see that now was her opportunity to trade upon John's sentimental affection for herself, but proceeded to sacrifice her own daughter to the success of the hostile alliance. "I think perhaps it's good for Frida to be teased sometimes," she ventured. As for Beatrice, she was not going to draw attention to her childlessness by giving one more woman the chance of feeling superior to herself, and her thwarted maternity was placed at the disposal of the three mothers. Indeed it was she who led the first foray, in which she was herself severely wounded, as will be seen. Among the unnecessary vexations and unsatisfactory pleasures which the human side of John inflicted upon the well-known dramatist, John Touchwood, was the collection of press-cuttings about himself and his work; one of Miss Hamilton's least congenial tasks was to preserve in a scrap-book these tributes to egoism.