"She is silly," John said.
"No," Helen said again. "She ought not to live here, that's all."
"She'll have to learn to. Anyhow"—he put his hands into his pockets—"we can't have Notya looking like that. It's—it won't do."
"It's quite easy not to hurt people," Helen murmured; "but you had to hurt her yourself, John, about your gardening."
"That was different," he said. He was a masculine creature. "I was fighting for existence."
"Miriam has an existence, too, you know," Rupert said.
From the other side of the hall there came a faint chink of plates and Miriam's low voice singing.
"She's all right," John assured himself.
Helen was smiling tenderly at the sound. "But I wonder why Notya is so hard on her," she sighed.
Rupert knocked his pipe against the fender. "I should be very glad to know what our mother was like," he said.