"Well ... you'd better see your Aunt Eliza. She's got all the money that's left.—But I don't see how you're going to get any very much out of Tony and Tim."
"Oh, I'll see they don't impose on me as they've been imposing on you!... So I may move that billiard-table, and alter the gun-room?"
"Yes, if you pay for it."
"Thanks—you are a dear!..."
By what arts Dorothy had contrived to lay Aunt Eliza under contribution doesn't matter very much here. Among themselves the Lennards and Taskers might quarrel, but they presented an unbroken front to the world—and Dorothy, for Aunt Eliza's special benefit, managed to make the world in some degree a party to her project. That is to say, that a paragraph had appeared in certain newspapers, announcing that an experiment of considerable interest, etc., the expenses of which were already guaranteed, and so forth, was about to be tried in the County of Shropshire, where "The Brear," the residence of the late Sir Noel Tasker, was already in course of alteration. And so on, in Dorothy's opinion, neither too much nor too little for her design.... It had been a public committance of the family, and it had worked the oracle with Aunt Eliza. Rather than have a public squabble about it, she had come in with her thousand, the work was now well advanced, and the venerable sinner who had recited the poems printed by Cosimo Pratt's Village Press was in charge of the job. Dorothy, hurriedly weaning the youngest Bit, had run down to Ludlow for the express purpose of announcing to him that it was a job, and not an aesthetic jollification.
Moreover, at that time she had half a hundred other matters to attend to; for Stan, escaping from powder-magazines as the last inch of fuse sputtered, and fervently hoping that the man had made no mistake about the length of stroke of the Nasmyth hammer under which he put his devoted head, could give her little help. Besides her own approaching déménagement, she had much of the care of that of her aunt. As Stan's earnings were barely sufficient for the current expenses of the household, she still had to turn to odds and ends of her old advertisement work. She had—Quis custodiet?—the nurse to look after, and the tradesmen, and letters, and callers, and Ruth. In short, a simple inversion of her aunt's dictum about the Pratts—"Too much money and not enough to do"—would have fitted Dorothy's case to a nicety.
Therefore, as another burden more or less would make little difference to one already so burdened, Dorothy had added still further to her cares. Ever since that day when Lady Tasker had come bareheaded out of her house and had spoken to Amory Pratt outside the Victoria and Albert Museum, Dorothy had had her sometime friend constantly on her mind. She had spoken of her to her aunt, who had again shown herself deplorably illiberal and incisive.
"I don't pretend to understand the modern young woman," she had remarked carelessly. "Half of 'em seem to upset their bodies with too much study, and the other half to play hockey till they're little better than fools. I suppose it's all right, and that somebody knows what they're about.... I often wonder what they'd have done, though, if it hadn't been for Sappho and Madame Curie.... By the way," she had gone irrelevantly on without a break, "does she want any more children besides those twins?"...
Nevertheless, Dorothy had had Amory so much on her mind that twice since Cosimo's departure for India she had been up to The Witan in search of her. After all, if anybody was to blame for anything it was Cosimo. But on neither occasion had Amory been at home. Dorothy had left messages, to which she had received no reply; and so she had gone a third time—had gone, as it happened, on that very afternoon when Ruth sang "A few more years shall roll" as she made the hot cakes for tea. This time she had persuaded Katie Deedes to come with her—for Katie had left the Eden, was out of a job, and for the time being had afternoon hours to spare.
But again they had failed to find Amory, and Dorothy and Katie took a turn round the Heath before returning to the flat for tea. As they walked along the hawthorn hedge that runs towards Parliament Hill and South Hill Park they talked. Kites were flying on the Hill; the Highgate Woods and the white spire showed like a pale pastel in the Spring sunshine; and from the prows of a score of prams growing babies leaned out like the figureheads of ships.