He looked round on all of them with the challenge of his young eyes.
"It's all very well, you know, but I agree with Miss Bickersteth. If you're a genius you've no business to marry—I mean nobody's any business to marry you."
"Mine," said Caro suavely, "was a purely abstract proposition."
But the terrible youth went on. "Mine isn't. Uncle Hugh's done a good thing for himself, I know. But it would have been a jolly sight better thing for literature if he'd married Gee-Gee, or somebody like that."
For there was nothing that young Eddy did not permit himself to say.
Little Hugh had begun to cry bitterly, as if he had understood that there had been some reflection on his mother. And from crying he went on to screaming, and Gertrude carried him, struggling violently, from the room.
The screams continued in the nursery overhead. Jane sat for a moment in agony, listening, and then rushed up-stairs.
Gertrude appeared, serene and apologetic.
"Can't anything be done," Brodrick said irritably, "to stop that screaming?"
"It's stopped now," said Winny.