Page:Georgie by Dorothea Deakin, 1906.djvu/252

"Georgie" "Time I went up to dress," Georgie said at last. "And I never noticed that Di was so beastly proper. I suppose I don't always notice things that other people do. Anne's prettier than she used to be. I did notice that. It doesn't seem to matter much what women say, if they aren't pretty."

But all the time he was dressing, Anne's words rankled in his ingenuous mind: "Do you ever put your money on a dead cert?" Did he?

He laughed uneasily.

That was one of the things he had promised Di. That he would give up betting.

"I love horses," she had said. "To have, and to ride and drive they're ripping. They're better than any old motor, Georgie. But when it comes to backing them, they're a snare of the devil."

He remembered this now. In her curious mixture of Puritanism and schoolboy slang she had once given him a lecture on his bad habits. 236