Page:Lolly Willowes - 1926.djvu/42

 When Henry apologised to him with dignity for the accident of their sex Everard quoted to him the nursery rhyme about what little boys and girls were made of. Henry was relieved to find his father taking so lightly a possible failure in the Willowes male line, but he wished the old man wouldn't trifle so. He could not stoop to give his father the lie over his unscientific theory of sex. He observed gloomily that daughters could be very expensive now that so much fuss was being made about the education of women.

Henry in his fears for the Willowes male line had taken it for granted that his brother would never marry. And certainly if to lie very low about a thing is a sign that one is not thinking about it, James had no thought of marriage. He was nearly thirty-three when he announced with his usual quiet abruptness that he was going to marry. The lady of his choice was a Miss Sibyl Mauleverer. She was the daughter of a clergyman, but of a fashionable London clergyman which no doubt accounted for her not being in the least like any clergyman's daughter seen by Everard and Laura hitherto. Miss Mauleverer's skirts were so long