The Ministry of Brains, a vast organisation, had many sections. There was the Propaganda Section, which produced pamphlets and organised lectures and cinema shows (Miss Grammont had been lent temporarily to this section by her own branch); there was the Men's Education Section, the Women's, and the Children's; the Section which dealt with brain-tests, examinations, certificates, and tribunals, and the Section which was concerned with the direction of the intellects of the Great Unborn. Ivy Delmer was attached to this section, and Mr. Delmer, when he heard about it, was not altogether sure it was quite nice for her. "She surely shouldn't know they have any," he had said to his wife, who was weeding, and replied absently, "Any what, dear? Who?" "Intellects," the vicar said. "The Unborn. Besides, they haven't." He was frowning, and jerking out dandelions from the lawn with a spud. "Oh, that's not it, dear," Mrs. Delmer reassured him vaguely. "Not the _just_ unborn, you know. The--the ever so long unborn. All this arrangement of who ought to marry who. Quite silly, of course, but no harm for Ivy in that way. After all, there's no reason why she shouldn't know that children often inherit their brains from their parents." The vicar admitted that, even for their precious and very young Ivy, there was no great harm in this. The Section in question was, as Mrs. Delmer had stated, concerned with the encouragement and discouragement of alliances in proportion as they seemed favourable or otherwise to the propagation of intelligence in the next generation. There were numerous and complicated regulations on the subject, which could not, of course, be enforced; the Ministry's methods were those of stimulation, reward and punishment, rather than of coercion. There were bonuses on the births of the babies of parents conforming to the regulations, and penal taxes on unregulated infants, taxes increasing in proportion to the flagrancy of the parents' disobedience, so that the offspring of parents of very low mental calibre brought with them financial ruin. Everyone held a Ministry of Brains form, showing his or her mental category, officially ascertained and registered. If you were classified A, your brains were certified to be of the highest order, and you were recommended to take a B2 or B3 partner (these were the quite intelligent). To ally yourself with another A or a B1 was regarded as wasteful, there not being nearly enough of these to go round, and your babies would receive much smaller bonuses. If you were classed C1, C2, or C3, your babies would receive no encouragement, unless you had diluted their folly with an A partner; if you chose to unite with another C they were heavily fined, and if you were below C3 (i.e. uncertificated) they were fined still more heavily, by whomsoever diluted, and for the third and subsequent infants born under such conditions you would be imprisoned. (Only the Ministry had