forming, or learning to appreciate the wisdom of their ways, and then they begin to wheedle and bribe.”
“Well, I must admit that when I hear you talk I feel I ought to be glad I never had any.” He looked up from the hammock at a crack in the verandah roof where a frail twig of honeysuckle had defied the opposition of shingles and was wriggling through.
Valerie, who was sitting in a chair beside him, took one of his hands and laid it against her cheek.
“You had two very effective ones, old dear, and they got a wonderful inspiration in a certain hour thirty-eight years ago.”
His eyes glowed over the edge of the hammock at her.
“You know, you’re going to spoil me.”
“Oh no, you’d nothing to do with this. They did it, and then they had the sense to die and leave you free.”
He smiled whimsically at her. “Ah, I sometimes wonder how free they left me. That is the funny part of it. I’m not nearly so free as you are, after all. Just see how powerless I have been against your father. In spite of all I could say he elects me to his club with a flourish, pays my dues, insists on my dining there in full view of Auckland’s greatest, and hey presto! I’m back in society and may be invited to a Christmas dinner. Ye gods and little fishes!”
“Well, he felt he had to do something for you after the way he behaved.”
“That’s not the point. The point is I could not resist him, and yet they cannot move you one inch.”
“They would move me fast enough if they had one honest decent emotion about us, if they had anything in their minds but their beastly curiosity and their condescension. I can see them sitting round discussing us with an awful solemnity. Mother would gather them together,
