"What are you doing to-day, Ishmael?"
"I am thinking of helping with the four-acre. Nicky will soon be down for the Easter recess, and then I shall be so carefully looked after I shall not get the chance to overtire myself."
"Nicky has turned out a dear boy, and good son," said Judy kindly.
"Nicky always was a dear boy—even at his most elusive. Jim is more human than Nicky was at his age, but he hasn't Nicky's charm, that something of a piskie's changeling that made Nicky so attractive. Yes, he's a 'good son,' to use your horrible expression, Judy. And Marjorie is a very good wife for him, though I must say I enjoy it when I can have the two boys, the big and the little one, to myself."
"I sometimes wonder how much you ever really liked women," said Judy.
"I have always liked them, as you call it, very much indeed. But I don't think I've ever thought of them as women first and foremost, but as human beings more or less like unto myself."
"That's where you've made your mistake. Not because they aren't—for they are—but because that destroys the mystery, and no one is keener on keeping up the idea that women are mysterious creatures, unlike men, than women themselves."
"I daresay you're right. But to look at, merely externally, I've always been able to get the mystery. They can look so that a man is afraid to touch such exquisite, ethereal creatures, all the time that they're wanting to be touched most. Georgie always used to say I never understood women."
"When she meant that you showed your understanding too clearly. Dear
Georgie!"
"Yes, dear Georgie! It does seem rough luck that she should have gone the first when she was so much younger than I, doesn't it?"