Page:Ann Veronica, a modern love story.djvu/141

 a residuum of expostulations. Her brother Roddy, who was in the motor line, came to expostulate; her sister Alice wrote. And Mr. Manning called.

Her sister Alice seemed to have developed a religious sense away there in Yorkshire, and made appeals that had no meaning for Ann Veronica's mind. She exhorted Ann Veronica not to become one of "those unsexed intellectuals, neither man nor woman."

Ann Veronica meditated over that phrase. "That's HIM," said Ann Veronica, in sound, idiomatic English. "Poor old Alice!"

Her brother Roddy came to her and demanded tea, and asked her to state a case. "Bit thick on the old man, isn't it?" said Roddy, who had developed a bluff, straightforward style in the motor shop.

"Mind my smoking?" said Roddy. "I don't see quite what your game is, Vee, but I suppose you've got a game on somewhere.

"Rummy lot we are!" said Roddy. "Alice--Alice gone dotty, and all over kids. Gwen--I saw Gwen the other day, and the paint's thicker than ever.  Jim is up to the neck in Mahatmas and Theosophy and Higher Thought and rot--writes letters worse than Alice.  And now YOU'RE on the war-path.  I believe I'm the only sane member of the family left.  The G.V.'s as mad as any of you, in spite of all his respectability; not a bit of him straight anywhere, not one bit."

"Straight?"

"Not a bit of it! He's been out after eight per cent. since the beginning.  Eight per cent.!  He'll come a cropper one of these days, if you ask me.  He's been near it once or twice already. That's g