Page:The White Peacock, Lawrence, 1911.djvu/44

36 the women. They were sitting in the window seat watching for us, mother and Alice and Lettie.

“You have been a long time!” said Lettie. “We’ve watched the sun go down—it set splendidly—look—the rim of the hill is smouldering yet. What have you been doing?”

“Waiting till your Taurus finished work.”

“Now be quiet,” she said hastily, and—turning to him, “You have come to sing hymns?”

“Anything you like,” he replied.

“How nice of you, George!” exclaimed Alice, ironically. She was a short, plump girl, pale, with daring, rebellious eyes. Her mother was a Wyld, a family famous either for shocking lawlessness, or for extreme uprightness. Alice, with an admirable father, and a mother who loved her husband passionately, was wild and lawless on the surface, but at heart very upright and amenable. My mother and she were fast friends, and Lettie had a good deal of sympathy with her. But Lettie generally deplored Alice’s outrageous behaviour, though she relished it—if “superior” friends were not present. Most men enjoyed Alice in company, but they fought shy of being alone with her.

“Would you say the same to me?” she asked.

“It depends what you’d answer,” he said, laughingly.

“Oh, you’re so bloomin’ cautious. I’d rather have a tack in my shoe than a cautious man, wouldn’t you Lettie?”

“Well—it depends how far I had to walk,” was Lettie’s reply—“but if I hadn’t to limp too far——”