"Good-evening, Dr. Prince," said Joanna abruptly. "Will you give us the benefit of your advice?"
"On whose account?" demanded the doctor, glancing sharply from one to another of the group.
"It's just this," said Char's cool, incisive tones. "My mother wishes to persuade me that my father is not in a fit state for me to take up my work at Questerham again. That I ought to remain here, doing practically nothing, while there's work crying out to be done."
"Sir Piers is in no immediate danger," said the doctor slowly. "In fact, there is every reason to hope that he is getting better. Otherwise, I suppose, you would hardly contemplate leaving home."
"But she's not suggesting leaving home!" cried Miss Bruce. "It's only a case of going backwards and forwards every day."
The doctor shrugged his shoulders and glanced at Lady Vivian.
"Sir Piers doesn't wish it," said Joanna curtly. "Surely that's reason enough. It distressed him very much, even before he was ill, that she should go and do this office work."
"I see. Yes. The ideas of the present day are not very easily assimilated by our generation," said the doctor gently.
He had often thought himself that Miss Vivian of Plessing had better have worked with her needle or amongst the poor, as had done the great ladies of his own generation, instead of in a Questerham office. But he had also been rather ashamed of his thoughts, and would not for the world have had them guessed by his pushing, good-natured wife, who was proud to let her two daughters help at the Depôt.
"We live in abnormal times," Char said. "I'm not doing the work for my own pleasure, but because the need for workers is desperate. I can do the job I've undertaken, and so far as I can see, there is no adequate reason, unless my father gets very much worse, for me to desert it."