"Can't help what?"
"Well!—rubbing me up the wrong way. But we all do that." Challis began to feel that he was in the bosom of the Family. He might ask questions freely, and did so as soon as the quiet of a retired walk in the garden allowed freedom of speech. The parroquets dropped the subject abruptly as soon as they found themselves alone.
"What's the Great Idea? I heard Lady Arkroyd talking of it to Lord Felixthorpe. It was her idea, wasn't it?"
"Do you mean Mamma's?" Judith asked. Mr. Challis had not, and hesitated a moment. Should he say, "Miss Sibyl's"? Surely no! Sunday citizens would say that. Very well, then! Should it be "Sibyl's" or "Your sister's"? He almost wished the young females of this landed family were ladyships: it comes so much handier for outsiders. He risked the point, and said, "Sibyl's," but softened the offence by adding, "Your sister's, I mean." If the fine eyelids were offended, they concealed it remarkably well. So much so that Mr. Challis said to himself that no doubt the Normans Christian-named more than the Saxons. Or, were those eyelids lenient towards his personal self? He was a married man, certainly; only, then!—a married man may feel flattered, look you! But this is not our affair at present. How about the Great Idea?
"Sibyl's idea, of course." The speaker accepted the Christian name; she could have said "My sister's" stiffly. "It's a perfectly mad one. A sort of new Factory, or perhaps I ought to say Institution. Everything is to be made there, only nobody is to be allowed to work there who is qualified to do anything else."
"Anything else than what?"
"Why—don't you understand? Arts and crafts. Enamels and lace and tapestry and hammered brass and copper. Not manufactures—mediæval things...."
"Oh, ah!—I know."
"All that sort of thing. Well!—the Great Idea is to take either some premises of the proper sort, or a piece of land and build a Factory, with studios for herself and Lady Betty Inglis; she must be in it to make Sir Spender Inglis, who's enormously rich, find half the capital. I've done my best ... to prevent it. But it's no use my saying anything. Will keeps her up to it."
"Your brother?"