Meanwhile, Aunt Lavvy and Florrie Maxwell, sitting by the French windows of the drawing-room, open to the garden, were drifting into leisurely intimate talk ... the children at tennis ... the croquet they had played as girls ... that odd man with the canary-silk waistcoat and the lively eyes who had wanted to marry Aunt Lavvy.... “D’you remember, Florrie, that picnic when I wore the rose-coloured dress which looked so awful near his waistcoat, and he couldn’t understand why I ran away from him all day ...” (and remembering, they giggled, two silly girls together). From the rose-coloured to other dresses ... the present time, and what suited Nina, and what suited Ursula--not Grace, because the Decisive Dress which suited Grace had already been worn--the dress which first attracted her husband’s attention. The “marrying mother” dies hard. “Mr. Barry Noyes once said that Ursula would be the beauty of the family; and really, I don’t think men like fine girls as they used to ...” and Tom’s taste in women ... and Tom ... and--confidence finally unleashed--what Tom had brought up against her about poor little Ronnie! And Florrie’s unspoken penitence for each hard thought she had ever had of Lavvy, separated the gossip like commas and semi-colons and exclamation marks. Lavvy was so sympathetic.... And how delicious for two women, how invigorating yet soothing--the resemblance to cocoa is accidental!--the ripple backward and forward between them, on those certain subjects in which neither men nor girls nor young married women nor one’s own husband nor anybody but just that other woman, are in the least intelligent. Tom Maxwell came home on Monday evening to an atmosphere a-quiver with a few memories and traces of the recent heavy storm, but otherwise peaceful, united, and, metaphorically, lit by quiet sunshine. He thought: “When a good row clears the air, it always proves the air needed it!” By Tuesday evening it occurred to him, however, that the air was not clear between himself and Florrie; and he remembered, as one with the difficulty of remembering a grotesque nightmare, that he had been amazingly hectic on the subject of a baby who had died of measles eleven years ago. He marvelled at his agitation, now limp to his proddings as a dead caterpillar. Had he actually charged Florrie with neglecting the kid? Preposterous! “It isn’t as though things didn’t happen,” blurted out Mr. Maxwell, bending over his trouser-press, to his wife already in bed. “And of course it stands to reason that if one could help them happening, one would. And, say what you like, to rear seven out of eight’s not bad. My mother lost three in a family of five.” Florrie, understanding all that lay beyond the articulate apology, stretched out her hand towards her back view of him, and replied, after one or two happy gulps, “Lavvy and I had such a nice talk today while the children were out. It would be so dull for me here without her.”