Ben's second sister, Merrill, whose husband was a country vicar, also had something to say against Ben's project, and said it; but with less acrimony than Alicia. Merrill had always been easygoing.

"Of course it was quite right to leave father," she agreed. "You couldn't have gone on there, with that fat woman. And what we're going to call her I have no notion. Nothing shall ever make me say 'Mother.' What do you call her?"

"I call her Belle," said Ben. "We arranged it."

"I couldn't do that," said Merrill. "I don't believe in the word as a name anyway. I think of it as something entirely different; something, between you and me, of which I'm sick to death, as you would be if you lived in a vicarage a few inches from a church. Ugh!—bells! But the name's a problem. 'Mother' is impossible; 'Stepmother' is absurd; 'Mrs. Staveley' would be absurd too. The wisest thing is not to see her at all and then one needn't call her anything. But that," she continued, "is nothing. What I want to ask you to do is to come and live with us; and if you had a spark of decency you'd do it."

Ben made a movement of dissent.

"And it wouldn't be such a sacrifice either," her sister went on, "for there's lots of things to do. Egbert won't have a car, it's true, but we can get one in the Village, only a bob a mile. There's a golf links four miles off and there's plenty of tennis and bridge. There are some quite decent young men; one, by the way, who's rolling."

"But there are the bells!" said Ben.

"Never mind about them," Merrill urged. "One can get used to anything—except," she added, "Egbert. Be a sport and think of your sister. I assure you, my dear, I shall go mad if I don't have someone to talk to and be with. You wouldn't have me in an asylum, would you?"

"But my dear Merrill," said Ben, "how can it be as bad as that? What is the matter with Egbert? You used to like him. I can't understand why everyone seems to get so tired of their husbands or wives. It makes me glad I'm not married. You liked him once, tremendously."

"I don't say I hate him now," said Merrill, "but he's become impossible. He spends his whole life between neglecting the parish and writing his book. It's not living at all. And no one will read his book. Who wants books on the Hittites? I tell him he'd far better be paying some attention to the English in the village, but that makes him cross. And when he's not writing, he's complaining of being overlooked and not being made a canon. He's always perfectly sweet and polite to me, and I could slap him. Not that we quarrel: not a bit of it. Ours isn't the kind of house you could call a 'Bickerage' for a moment. But we just stagnate. He doesn't really need me and I'm bored by him. Oh, how bored! If only he would take one or two backward boys it would be a relief, a change, but he won't. He says they would interfere with his work.

"This isn't," she went on, "the kind of life that I married for. But then, what is it that one marries for? I know what the Church service says, of course, only too well. But surely there should be some fun too? That is what we're brought up to believe and expect; but I assure you, Ben, I've never been anything in Egbert's life whatever. Not really. I'm merely in his house; I see that his meals are punctual and fit to eat; I see that he has clean surplices; I see that his study is dusted and the fire lit; and I listen to his tales of woe. And that's the end of it. I'm just his wife. He wanted me badly enough, and he got me, and that was the end. It has never occurred to him that a wife could want to be anything more than the punctual inmate of a man's house. I can't even keep a dog, because dogs get on his nerves. But he likes you—you could make him a little more human, I believe, if anyone could. Do give up this 'Beck and Call' stuff and come and help me. I'm certain it's your duty."

Ben shook her head.

"But don't you do anything in the parish?" she asked. "Don't you visit?"

"Do I not visit?" exclaimed Merrill. "Of course I do. I have to. It all falls on me. But is that what I was made for? Why, I'm only thirty-one. Is that any life for a woman of thirty-one? No, Ben dear, be a sport and come and stay with us and you and I will have some fun and you'll keep me from thinking too much and regretting too much. Egbert won't worry you a bit; he'll hardly know you're there."

"My poor Merrill," said Ben, "I wish I could. But it's too late. I've got into this business and I must stick to it."

"Very well, then," said Merrill, "let me be your first client and get me a nice jolly curate, even if I have to pay for him myself."

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