Page:Georgie by Dorothea Deakin, 1906.djvu/287

When the Girls Came Out I did n't betray Anne to him, but I told Drusilla.

She received my news with a sigh.

"Poor Anne," said she, "of course she loves him. You never understood that, but I knew. And of course Georgie won't hear of her now. Do you know?" She blushed a little. "I don't believe Georgie ever really cared for any of these girls in the right way."

"You think he was driven to propose to them all in the last recklessness of despair when he lost you?" I asked gravely, knowing very well that this was exactly what she did think.

She leaned over her boy, sleepy and rosy in his crib, and carefully covered an out-flung arm.

"Matthew Arnold," she said, "when you're a man you'll pay your daddy out, for all these jeers at your sainted Mammy, won't you?"

"The Lost Columbine" was off my hands I saw little of Georgie, and 271