Page:The Confessions of a Well-Meaning Woman.djvu/45

 on the staff, these things are brought to your notice. . . “And what is he in civil life?,” I asked.

Phyllida didn’t know. His father, I think she told me, was a surveyor, and she presumed that he intended to be a surveyor too. And an excellent profession, I should imagine, with the big estates being broken up and the properties changing hands everywhere. Brackenbury had an offer for the Hall—some wealthy contractor. . . I couldn’t help smiling to think how our father would have dealt with him. Brackenbury let him off far too lightly, I thought, and tried to justify himself to me by saying that it was a very tempting offer. . . As if they needed money. . . I had made up my mind at the outset to do nothing precipitate. The war has made girls quite dangerously romantic, and any opposition might have created—artificially—a most undesirable attachment. I knew that Phyllida had these young officers through her hands in dozens; and, though I was naturally anxious, I knew that in a few weeks or months our paragon would be back in Flanders or Devonshire—out of Christine Malleson’s hospital, at all events. I commended my spirit, so to say. ..

He came to call—Colonel Butler did. I so