Page:Georgie by Dorothea Deakin, 1906.djvu/277

When the Girls Came Out tunity? Oh, my dear boy, don't break her poor little heart for the sake of your own silly pride."

But Georgie threw back his shoulders and set his teeth in his admirable British way.

"Thank you Drusie," he said, "you mean well, but you don't quite understand. There are some things a decent chap can't do. This is one of 'em."

Drusilla grew crimson, but she kept back the torrent of words on her tongue's end, and let the matter rest where it was.

"He would never see my point of view," she said sadly to me afterward. "He would spoil a girl's life with a light heart for the sake of his precious self-respect. It isn't self-respect. It's fear of what people will say."

"Drusilla," replied I thoughtfully, "isn't all this fuss a bit unnecessary. Even if Georgie and his mother have nothing else, the estate will bring them in fifteen hundred a year or so. That's three times as much as we have to live on. Yet you 261