Page:The Confessions of a Well-Meaning Woman.djvu/49

 Phyllida. Upbringing, milieu. . . He was no fool; I felt he’d see it for himself before he’d been at the Hall half an hour. . . To cut a long story short, I made him promise to hold no more communication with the child until he’d seen Brackenbury; and I told my brother to invite him there for a week-end. I didn’t see very much of what happened, as I left the young people to themselves; but Will entirely bore out the vague, intangible feeling. . . Poor Colonel Butler wasn’t at home; he made my boy’s life a burden for days beforehand, asking what clothes he should take, and, when they were there, it was “I’ve been away so much that I don’t know what the tariff is since the war: if I give ten shillings to the man who looks after me, how much ought I to give the butler?”. . . Things I should have thought a man knew without asking. Will was really rather naughty about it. . . Brackenbury didn’t see anything amiss. One’s standard changes when one has done that sort of thing oneself. As I always said, “If you don’t absorb her, she’ll absorb you.” And so it’s proved. Ruth, of course, saw only the romance of it all. Goodness me, unless we’re all twins, some one has to be the youngest colonel in the army. . . I don’t know what people mean nowadays, when they talk about