"Is it too good to live, Gertrude?" said she.
Gertrude looked at Brodrick as if she thought that he was.
"I don't think Mr. Brodrick will let it die," she said. "If he takes a thing up you can trust him to carry it through. He can fight for his own. He's a born fighter."
Down at her end of the table beside Brodrick, Laura listened.
"It has been a bit of a struggle, I imagine, up till now," said Prothero to Jane.
"Up till now" (it was Gertrude who answered) "his hands have been tied. But now it's absolutely his own thing. He has realized his dream."
If she had seen Prothero's eyes she would have been reminded that Brodrick's dream had been realized for him by his wife. She saw nothing but Brodrick. For Gertrude the "Monthly Review" was Brodrick.
She drew him for Prothero's benefit as the champion of the lost cause of literature. She framed the portrait as it were in a golden laurel wreath.
Eddy Heron cried, "Hear, hear!" and "Go it, Gertrude!" and Winny wanted to know if her uncle's ears weren't tingling. She was told that an editor's ears were past tingling. But he flushed slightly when Gertrude crowned herself and him. They were all listening to her now.
"I assure you," she was saying, "we are not afraid."