she said.

“Courage for what?” asked her uncle.

“For everything.”

Tom Brangwen gave a sharp little laugh. The mother and father sat silent, with listening faces. Skrebensky waited. She was speaking for him.

“Everything's nothing,” laughed her uncle.

She disliked him at that moment.

“She doesn't practice what she preaches,” said her father, stirring in his chair and crossing one leg over the other. “She has courage for mighty little.”

But she would not answer. Skrebensky sat still, waiting. His face was irregular, almost ugly, flattish, with a rather thick