' The effort had
justly recoiled upon himself; the words, coming round in the most
delicate way to Aunt Juley's ears, were repeated by her in a shocked
voice to Mrs. Roger, whence they returned again to young Roger.
And, after all, it was only the wrong-doers who suffered; as, for
instance, George, when he lost all that money playing billiards; or
young Roger himself, when he was so dreadfully near to marrying the girl
to whom, it was whispered, he was already married by the laws of Nature;
or again Irene, who was thought, rather than said, to be in danger.
All this was not only pleasant but salutary. And it made so many hours
go lightly at Timothy's in the Bayswater Road; so many hours that must
otherwise have been sterile and heavy to those three who lived there;
and Timothy's was but one of hundreds of such homes in this City of
London--the homes of neutral persons of the secure classes, who are out
of the battle themselves, and must find their reason for existing, in
the battles of others.
But for the sweetness of family gossip, it must indeed have been lonely
there. Rumours and tales, reports, surmises--were they not the children
of the house, as dear and precious as the prattling babes the brother
and sisters had missed in their own journey? To talk about them was
as near as they could get to the possession of all those children and
grandchildren, after whom their soft hearts yearned.
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