seems to suit you."

"And you," Neville returned, "look as if you'd jazzed all night and
written unkind reviews from dawn till breakfast time."

"That's just about right," Nan owned, and flung herself full length on
her back, shutting her eyes against the sun. "That's why I've come down
here to cool my jaded nerves. And also because Rosalind wanted to lunch
with me."

"Have you read my poems yet?" enquired Gerda, who never showed the
customary abashed hesitation in dealing with these matters. She and Kay
sent their literary efforts to Nan to criticise, because they believed
(a) in her powers as a critic, (b) in her influence in the literary
world. Nan used in their behalf the former but seldom the latter,
because, in spite of queer spasms of generosity, she was jealous of Gerda
and Kay. Why should they want to write? Why shouldn't they do anything
else in the world but trespass on her preserves? Not that verse was what
she ever wrote or could write herself. And of course everyone wrote now,
and especially the very young; but in a niece and nephew it was a
tiresome trick. They didn't write well, because no one of their age ever
does, but they might some day. They already came out in weekly papers and
anthologies of contemporary verse. Very soon they would come out in
little volumes. They'd much better, thought Nan, marry and get out of the
way.

"Read them--yes," Nan returned laconically to Gerda's question.

"What," enquired Gerda, perseveringly, "did you think of them?"