Norie:  “Beryl is well over her accouchement and is confident of being able to start work here on August 1....  It’s a boy this time.  I haven’t seen it, so I can’t say whether it resembles a policeman more than an architect.  Besides babies up till the age of six months only resemble macrocephalic idiots....  I shall be wary with Beryl—­haven’t committed myself—­ourselves to any engagement beyond six months.  She’s amazingly clever, but I should say quite heartless.  Two babies in three years, and both illegitimate—­the real Mrs. Architect very much upset, no doubt, Mr. Architect getting wilder and wilder in his work through trying to maintain two establishments—­they say he left out all the sanitation in Sir Peter Robinson’s new house and let the builders rush up the walls without damp courses—­and it’s killing her father, the Dean.  It’s not as though she hid herself away, but she goes out so much!  They are talking of turning her out of her club because of the things she says before the waitresses...”

Vivie:  “What things?”

Norie:  “Why, about its being very healthy to have babies when you’re between the ages of twenty and thirty; and how with this twilight sleep business she doesn’t mind how often; that it’s fifty times more interesting than breeding dogs and cats or guinea-pigs; and she’s surprised more single women don’t take it up.  I think she must be detraquee....  I have a faint hope that by taking her in hand and interesting her in our work—­which entre nous deux—­is turning out to be very profitable—­I may sober her and regularize her.  No doubt in 1950 most women will talk as she does to-day, but the advance is too abrupt.  It not only robs her parents of all happiness, but it upsets my mother.  She now wrings her hands over her own past and fears that by working so strenuously for the emancipation of women she has assisted to breach the dam—­Can’t you imagine the way the old cats of both sexes go on at her?—­the dam which held up female virtue, and that Society now will be drowned in a flood of Free Love...”

Vivie:  “Well!  We’ll give her a six months’ trial here, and see if our mix-up of advice in Law, Banking, Estate management, Stock-and-share dealing, Divorce, Private Enquiries, probate, etc., does not prove much more interesting than an illicit connection with a hare-brained architect....  If she proves impossible you’ll pack her off and Vivie shall return and D.V.  Williams go abroad....  Don’t you think there is something that ought to win over Providence in that happily chosen name? D.V. Williams?  And my mother once actually called herself ‘Vavasour.’

“Well, then, barring accidents and the unforeseen, it’s agreed I go on my holiday next Saturday, to return never no more—­perhaps—?—­”

Norie (with a sigh):  “Yes!”

Vivie:  “How’s your mother?”

Norie:  “Oh, as to her, I’m glad to say ‘much better.’  When I can get away, after the new clerks and Beryl are installed and everything is going smoothly, I shall take her to Switzerland, to a deliciously quiet spot I know and nobody else knows up the Goeschenenthal.  The Continent won’t be so hot for travelling if we don’t start till the end of August...”