Extraordinary how defiant Rosalind made one feel, prying and questioning and trying to make one look absurd.
"Why, of course! It freshens you up, I expect; makes a change.... But you've come up from Windover, haven't you, not the seaside?"
Rosalind always called St. Mary's Bay the seaside. To her our island coasts were all one; the seaside was where you went to bathe, and she hardly distinguished between north, south, east and west.
"How are they down at Windover? I heard that Nan was there, with that young man of hers who performs good works. So unlike Nan herself! I hope she isn't going to be so silly as to let it come to anything; they'd both be miserable. But I should think Nan knows better than to marry a square-toes. I daresay he knows better too, really.... And how's poor old Neville? I think this doctoring game of hers is simply a scream, the poor old dear."
To hear Rosalind discussing Neville.... Messalina coarsely patronising a wood-nymph ... the cat striking her claws into a singing bird.... And poor—and old! Neville was, indeed, six years ahead of Rosalind, but she looked the younger of the two, in her slim activity, and didn't need to paint her face either. Mrs. Hilary all but said so.
"It is a great interest to Neville, taking up her medical studies again," was all she could really say. (What a hampering thing it is to be a lady!) "She thoroughly enjoys it, and looks younger than ever. She is playing a lot of tennis, and beats them all."
How absurdly her voice rang when she spoke of Neville or Jim! It always made Rosalind's lip curl mockingly.
"Wonderful creature! I do admire her. When I'm her age I shall be too fat to take any exercise at all. I think it's splendid of women who keep it up through the forties.... She won't be bored, even when she's sixty, will she?"
That was a direct hit, which Mrs. Hilary could bear better than hits at Neville.
"I see no reason," said Mrs. Hilary, "why Neville should ever be bored. She has a husband and children. Long before she is sixty she will have Kay's and Gerda's children to be interested in."