When Giles came home for the holidays, Toppie and her father had gone again to Bournemouth. “She might have waited a week longer, so that I could see her,” said Giles sadly. It was still taken happily for granted that Alix should sit with Giles in the mornings. There were fires everywhere this Winter, but she was more than ever glad of the refuge. Ruth had become a rather overwhelming presence. She had made new friends at Somerville and spent the first fortnight of her holidays with them in London, going to art-student dances in Chelsea and medical-student dances in Bloomsbury, and returning to her home with what Alix felt to be many a foolish flourish added to her sensible signature. She addressed Alix as “dear old ass,” and her favourite exclamation was “God!” “It is so unlike our _mon Dieu_,” Alix could not forbear writing to Maman. “It is as if one saw a hen suddenly lay an ostrich egg—and so proud of it. I think when English people like Ruth become emancipated, they are very like hens laying ostrich eggs. There is such a strain; and, when it is all over, it is not an interesting object.” Ruth had been meant by nature to be like Aunt Bella, though with much of beauty added. She was tall and large and brightly fair. She had little gaiety, but she gave an impression of massive cheerfulness; and it knocked you down if you impeded it, and strode, almost gravely, on its way. Alix was pleased to feel that Giles, too, found Ruth irritating. He could be very sharp with her, especially when she patronized her mother. But Ruth now, fortified by her new experience of life and in less awe of a brother, was not to be quelled by sharpness, so that if Giles had not withdrawn into gloomy silences there would often have been quarrels. “There’s no harm in her. She’s as good as gold. She’d go to the stake for Mummy if it were necessary, cheerfully and as a matter of course; only she’s so insufferably conceited,” Giles grumbled to Alix in the study. “Why didn’t you tell her she knew nothing about it, when she was chaffing you about French manners and customs just now? All she knows about French manners are those of the professor’s family she stayed with in Paris. Why didn’t you tell her to shut up?” “That would have been rude,” said Alix. “Well, she was rude.” “But that is no reason for me,” Alix slightly smiled, looking up at him. “By Jove, no!” Giles, with a rueful laugh, rubbed his hand through his hair. “Ruth’s manners could never be a reason for yours, could they! I say, you know, that’s a nasty one, Alix!” “I do not mean it to be nasty. And she did not mean to be rude,” said Alix. “She meant only to be funny.” “That makes her stupid, then, as well as conceited,” said Giles.