On the whole he preferred George's gross swaggering over his paternity, and there was a sure satisfaction in watching his sister-in-law suckle her baby. But there again George and his wife took upon themselves an excessive credit for the achievement, hoarded it, invested it in everybody whom they could get to take it, seeming to use the child as a means of gaining admiration for themselves. They seemed to be incapable of recovering from the astonishment of anything so natural happening to themselves, and they too, a little more exuberantly and less charmingly, barred René out. "By Jove!" George would say, "there is nothing like it. It's wonderful what you can do without when you've got that. And, as I was saying to Elsie, I can't make out what swells do who have a nurse. I can't tell you how jolly glad I was when the monthly went and we could have it all to ourselves." To René George was so horrible when he talked so, that he would forget the sentimental satisfaction he had had in the contemplation of the change wrought in the household by the advent of his nephew. "And imagine," George said once, "that one never thinks of it. You get making love and all that. Just a bit o' fun, as likely as not, and it leads to this. By God, it's a big thing. Hark at the little beggar. I tell you, René, my heart sometimes stops with fright when a long time goes by and he doesn't howl. Oh, well, your day will come. It'll come, all right. Don't you worry!" In desperation René led the conversation elsewhere. And at home things were hardly better. He felt that his mother did not like Linda, though she showed no reluctance to talk of her, or indeed to praise her. Perhaps Linda had frightened her. And sometimes René would feel that his mother had a real horror of love and marriage and all but the most superficial and sentimental relations of the sexes. He would wonder how that could be reconciled with her reception of his father or her excited business before the coming of Elsie's baby. She was often disconcertingly silent when he came home from some employment with Linda, and he learned that he must not tell her what he had been doing. Sometimes she would begin of her own accord to talk of Linda: "She has such eyes. She sees everything. You feel she knows every stitch of clothing you have on. And the things she wears herself-- Well! But she's very pleasant and she's got a pretty smile. Girls were very different in my day." "How were they different?" René would ask. "I don't know. Different. I can't say. We were more patient. There were some things we didn't talk of. But, of course, she's not English. That would account for a good deal. If you weren't so set on her I should say she was making a fool of herself. Girls often do, you know, with a sort of man they've not been used to. But I will say this for you, René, you're not one not to take a girl seriously." René looked puzzled. His mother laughed.