"Frightful rows there'd be," Stan usually commented, thinking less of Dorothy's plan than of his own last trick-tumble. "Like putting brothers into the same regiment; always a mistake. And we're all rather good at rows you know."
"Well, they're our own rows anyway. We keep 'em to ourselves. And we do all mean pretty much the same thing when all's said. I'm going to work it all out anyway, and then tackle Aunt Grace.... I shall manage it, of course."
She did not add that her Lennards and Taskers and Woodgates would sink their private squabbles precisely in proportion as the outside attacks on their common belief rendered a closing-up of the ranks necessary. But she had been to The Witan and had kept her eyes open there, and knew that there were plenty of other Witans about. If stupid Parliament, with its votes and what not, couldn't think of anything to do about it, that was no reason why she should not do something, and make stingy old Aunt Eliza pay for the training of her Bits into the bargain.
She had not seen Amory since that day when the episode of the winter woollies had made her angry, for, though Amory had called once at the Nursing Home soon after the birth of the third Bit, Dorothy had really not felt equal to the hair-raising tale of the twins all over again, and had sent a message down to her by the nurse. There was this difference between this tragic recital of Amory's and the fervour with which Ruth Mossop always hugged to her breast the thought of the worst that could happen—that Ruth had known brutality, and so might be forgiven for getting "a little of her own back"; but Amory had known one hardish twelvemonths perhaps, a good many years ago and when she had been quite able to bear it, and had since magnified that period of discomfort by a good many diameters. Amory, Dorothy considered, didn't really know she was born. She was unfeignedly sorry for that. Whatever measure of contempt was in her she kept for Cosimo.
For she considered that Cosimo was at the bottom of all the trouble. If Stan, at his most impecunious and happy-go-lucky, could still stalk about the house saying "Dot, I won't have this," or "Look here, Dorothy, that has got to stop," it seemed to her that Cosimo, with never a care on his mind that was not his own manufacture, might several times have prevented Amory from making rather a fool of herself. But it seemed to Dorothy that kind of man was springing up all over the place nowadays. Mr. Brimby was another of them. Dorothy had read one of Mr. Brimby's books—"The Source," and hadn't liked it. She had thought it terribly dismal. In it a pretty and rich young widow, who might almost have been Amory herself, went slumming, and spent a lot of money in starting a sort of Model Pawn Shop, and by and by there came a mysterious falling-off in her income, and she went to see her lawyer about it, and learned, of course, that her source of income was that very slum in which she had stooped to labour so angelically.... Dorothy didn't know very much about pawnshops, but then she didn't believe that Mr. Brimby did either; and if her interest in them ever should become really keen, she didn't think she should go to Oxford for information about them. And Mr. Brimby himself seemed to feel this "crab," as Stan would have called it, for after "The Source" he had written a Preface for a book by a real and genuine tramp.... And it had been Amory who had recommended "The Source" to Dorothy. She had said that it just showed, that with vision and thought and heart and no previous experience ("no prejudice" had been her exact words), there need be none of these dreadful grimy establishments, with their horrible underbred assistants who refused a poor woman half a crown on her mattress and made a joke about it, but airy and hygienic rooms instead, with rounded corners so that the dust could be swept away in two minutes (leaving a balance of at least twenty-eight minutes in which the sweeper might improve himself), and really courtly-mannered attendants, full of half crowns and pity and Oxford voice, who would give everybody twice as much as they asked for and a tear into the bargain.
And Amory knew just as much about real pawnshops as did Dorothy and Mr. Brimby.
For the life of her Dorothy could not make out what all these people were up to.
And—though this was better now that Stan was earning—the thought of the money that was being squandered at The Witan had sometimes made her ready to cry. For at the Nursing Home she had had one other visitor, and this visitor had opened her eyes to the appalling rate at which Cosimo's inheritance must be going. This visitor had been Katie Deedes. Katie too, was an old fellow-student of Dorothy's; it had not taken Dorothy long to see that Katie was full of a grievance; and then it had all come out. There had been some sort of a row. It had been simply and solely because Katie ran a Food Shop. Amory thought that infra dig. And just because Katie had given the children a few chestnuts Amory had practically said so.
"I shan't go there again," Katie had said, trying on Dorothy's account to keep down her tears. "I didn't marry a man with lots of money, and turn him round my finger, and make him write my Life and Works, and then snub my old friends! And none of the people who go there are really what she thinks they are. She thinks they go to see her, but Mr. Brimby only goes because Dickie does, and because he wants to sell the 'Novum' something or other, and Mr. Strong of course has to go, and Mr. Wilkinson goes because he wants Cosimo to stop the 'Novum' and start something else with him as editor, and Laura goes because they get things printed about Walter's Lectures, and I don't know what those Indians are doing there at all, and anyway I've been for the last time! I'm just as good as she is, and I should like to come and see you instead, Dorothy, and of course I won't bring your babies chestnuts if you don't want.... But I'm frightfully selfish; I'm tiring you out.... May an A B C girl come to see you?"
And Katie had since been. There is no social reason why the manager of a Vegetarian Restaurant may not visit the house of a film acrobat.