Page:Georgie by Dorothea Deakin, 1906.djvu/37

"Plain Anne" her." And so on, for three weeks. Then one evening Georgie dropped in.

"I can't bear it," he said; "it's wearing me to a shadow."

"What's the matter now?" I asked with scant sympathy, for I had never seen a larger or more aggressively healthy youth.

"Drusilla. She's fretting about something. Anne says it's the secrecy. She's a kind-hearted girl."

"Who—Drusilla?"

"No—Anne. She wants me to have our engagement made public on my birthday in August."

"She is quite right," said I gravely, but the thought of Drusilla in tears was a knife in my heart.

"If you think," said Georgie hotly, "that I'm going to ruin Violet's whole life you're jolly well mistaken—see?"

"If you go on as you have begun," I retorted, "I see that you are more likely to ruin it by marrying her."

He left me in disgust, but he had left 21