"I'm afraid I think it _infra dig_. Darting about with all these girls, when she's capable of such very different sort of work--if only she'd do it!" "My dear Char, what on earth do you want her to do?" demanded Trevellyan, to whom it came as a shock that any one who was privileged to live near Joanna should think her anything but perfect. "She is an extremely capable woman of business; why shouldn't she take up some big work for the Government? They are crying out for educated women." "She couldn't possibly leave your father alone at Plessing." "She could do a certain amount of work at home even without that. The truth is, Johnnie, that neither she nor my father have _realized_ there's a war on at all. They've no sons out there in the trenches, and it hasn't hit them materially; they've not felt it in any single, smallest way. I shouldn't say it to any one but you, but there are times at Plessing when I could go _mad_. To hear my father talk on and on about whether some tree on the estate needs cutting or not, just as though on the other side of a little strip of sea--" She broke off with a shudder that was not altogether histrionic. "And mother--she wouldn't even knit socks, because it interfered with his billiards in the evenings! I don't understand her, Johnnie. She must _know_ what it all means, yet it's all shoved away in the background. Brucey tells me that she's under standing orders not to discuss the news in the papers at breakfast, and mother won't have a single war-book in the house--not even a war-novel, if she can help it. It's as though they were deliberately trying to blind themselves. I _can't_ understand it." Trevellyan did not feel sure that he understood it, either, but, unlike Char, there was in his mind no shadow of criticism for that which he did not understand. The limitation, Trevellyan always felt, was entirely his. But he was able to look sympathetically also at Char's vexed bewilderment. "You're not at Plessing very much, nowadays, yourself." "No. I don't think I could bear it, Johnnie. Of course they say I'm doing too much, but, after all, I'm of an age to decide that for myself, and to my mind there's simply no choice in the matter. Thank Heaven one _can_ work!" "Your undertaking is a colossal thing, in its way. It's wonderful of you, Char!" She looked pleased. "It's running well at present. Of course, I know what a tiny part of the whole it is really, but--" She broke off quickly as Lady Vivian joined them. "Who is the little dark-haired girl I've been working with, Char? The one at that table...." "Oh, a Miss--er--Jones," said Char languidly. "You never told me you had any one of her sort here. I want to ask her out to Plessing. Couldn't we take her back in the car tonight?" "My dear mother!" Char opened her eyes in an expression of exaggerated horror. "One of my staff?" "Well?" queried Lady Vivian coolly, stripping off her borrowed overall.