"Rosalind sent you to him; of course; she would. Why didn't you ask me, mother? He's a desperate Freudian, you know, and they're not nearly so good as the others. Besides, this particular man is a shoddy scoundrel, I believe.... Was he offensive?"
"I wouldn't let him be, Jim. I was prepared for that. I ... I changed the conversation."
Jim laughed, and did his favourite trick with her hand, straightening the thin fingers one by one as they lay across his sensitive palm. How happy it always made her!
"Well," he said, "I daresay this man down at the Bay is all right. I'll find out if he's any good or not.... They talk a lot of tosh, you know, mother; you'll have to sift the grain from the chaff."
But he saw that her eyes were interested, her face more alert than usual, her very poise more alive. She had found a new interest in life, like keeping a parrot, or learning bridge, or getting religion. It was what they had always tried to find for her in vain.
"So long," he said, "as you don't believe more than half what they tell you.... Let me know how it goes on, won't you, and what this man is like. If I don't approve I shall come and stop it."
She loved that from Jim.
"Of course, dearest. Of course I shall tell you about it. And I know one must be careful."
It was something to have become an object for care; it put one more in the foreground. She would have gone on willingly with the subject, but Jim changed her abruptly for Neville.
"Neville's looking done up."