This was the speech that severed Mrs. Trenchard from her brother. She never forgot nor forgave it. She never forgave it because she could not forget it: his words were to haunt her from the moment of their utterance until the last conscious instant of her life. She had been born entirely without imagination, but she had not been born without the wish for romance. Moreover, the Faunder tradition (which is the same as the Trenchard tradition) taught her to believe that there was something enfeebling and dangerous about imagination, and that the more one thought about things not immediately within sight the less likely one was to do one’s daily task with efficiency. Her longing for a romantic life therefore (that is for the justification of her own personal existence) was assisted by no private dreams nor castle-building. No Faunder or Trenchard had ever built a castle in the air when there were good square manors and vicarages waiting to be constructed on good solid ground. She directed the whole of her passionate life towards her relations with her children, but never even to herself would she admit that she had any passionate life at all. Take away the children and there was nothing left for her except her religion; because the loss of them would be the one tragedy that would drive her to question the justice of her God was justification of itself for her passionate determination. Now Timothy had said that she would lose them—well, Timothy should see. With other children, with other mothers, it might be so. God Himself should not take them from her. Nevertheless, as the children grew, the shadows of his words ever pursued her and hemmed her in. She watched, with close attention, other families, and saw that Timothy’s warning was justified often enough, but always she was able to find for herself some reason. The weakness of selfishness or carelessness of the parent. Not weak, nor selfish, nor careless could any watching Powers, waiting to pounce, accuse her of being! When the children grew older she discovered certain things about them. Henry often annoyed her with his untidiness and strangely unjustified egotism. He always thought about himself, and yet never did anything. She liked Henry least of her children. Mildred was delightful, clever, the “show child”, but for that very reason would in all probability be, afterwards, the most restless of them. As the two girls grew Mrs. Trenchard told herself that, perhaps, Millie would have to be sacrificed, and in telling herself this she implied that if she would only, when the time came, allow Millie without a murmur to depart, the Gods would be satisfied with that and Katherine would remain. It came to this, that by the time that Katherine was twelve she was the centre of her mother’s existence. Mildred and Henry would be held as long as it was possible to hold them, but, if the worst came, they should go. Katherine would always remain....