Page:The principal girl (IA principalgirl00snai).pdf/125

 "It's whether it would do for you, old girl. I'm not much of a chap, I know, but I should begin to pick up a bit—I'm sure I should—if I had got a real pal like you to pull my socks up for me."

"It isn't because I don't like you, Philip," said Mary, so nicely that the owner of the knitted chocolate waistcoat wanted to clasp her to it in one of London's most important thoroughfares. "It is because I do."

"Won't you risk it, anyway?"

"But I don't think I ought—really. Your people, you know. And I'm sure that Granny—"

"Oh, but this is our affair. I've thought it all out; and if a chap wants a wife, I don't see that anybody has a right to meddle. It's askin' a lot, I know—your career and all that—but I've enough for two, and you wouldn't have to sing and dance to three thousand people when you were feeling so cheap you didn't know how."

Mary was troubled by this importunity as a girl as nice as she was bound to be. She had already grown to like this rather heavy young man. She felt capable of being a father, a mother, a brother and a sister to him, or any equally near relation whose function it would be to pull his socks up for him. But she was also a very sensible and unselfish girl, moreover, a pretty clear-sighted one; and when she said that Granny would never,