‘We could,’ said Eileen, ‘if we ever really wanted to do anything for long enough. But everything is undermined by other people’s damned subtleties – especially father’s. “Oh, of course, do it if you like, my dear,” he says, and looks at one as though one were diseased. “If you are so very keen to, if you really think it is worth while.” You see, one’s put at once in such an impossible position, having to be “very keen”. It makes one so inferior to father, who is never keen on anything, especially when it is a question of any of us marrying any of these young men – though it is the same thing with any career any of us ever want to take up; we do feel it must be an advantage to a girl to have some kind of career, though she might not want to stick to it. And no young man, if one comes to look at it dispassionately, is worth all the fuss father expects us to make about him. Then father sighs and says, “Well, I’m afraid if you don’t feel more strongly than that about it ——” and one looks so feeble. Our father,’ said Eileen, ‘is most fearfully subtle. No wonder he’s a specialist.’

‘But I don’t think specialists need to be subtle in that way,’ said Joan, with an eye on Colonel Duperrier, who appeared surprised.

‘One is tempted to wish,’ observed Eileen, ‘that, for purposes of marriage at least, one hadn’t got a father at all, like Sydney Warren. Though in her case, anyway, it would be difficult to kick up a fuss. I must say, if Sydney really did want to get married – and she never gave me a bit that impression – it was very business-like of her to pick out anybody as eligible as dear old Milton. But then, Sydney is a very precise sort of business-like girl. She was going, you know, to have been a doctor.’

‘I had no idea,’ said Colonel Duperrier.

‘I think she’s cold-blooded,’ said Joan; ‘she gives me the creeps rather. And I don’t think she’s a bit suitable for a clergyman’s wife: I can just see her looking disdainfully at the churchwardens and people.’

‘She’ll make an excellent bishop’s wife,’ said Colonel Duperrier. ‘All the bishops’ wives I have met were very disdainful. She’ll look very handsome, too, in kind of black satiny garments, twenty or thirty years hence.’