Page:The principal girl (IA principalgirl00snai).pdf/71

 young man was an eldest son, and his evening clothes suited him so very well—which, by the way, one rather takes for granted in Grosvenor Square—it was just as well perhaps for him to learn to come to heel at the outset, so that both dear Adela and he might be saved unnecessary trouble after Dr. Bridge had played Op. 9.

It is hard, concludes the wise lady, for human error of the crude masculine variety to go much further than yours has done, if for a moment you could allow your deluded readers to imagine that a well-born girl could treat with more than feigned indifference an educated Englishman with a comfortable private fortune. Because no well-born girl ever is indifferent to three addresses and possibly a yacht, however much she may appear to be so.

The morning following being Sunday, dear Adela kept her bed till Monday instead of going to church.

"Where is the Pain?" said Sir Wotherspoon Ogle Bart.

The rude girl snapped at him a little, although he was such a very dear old Fellah, as Windsor Cassel used to say. But he quite agreed that dining with dull people was likely to overthrow a sensitive digestion; still for the next twenty-four hours at any rate, she must take nothing in the way of nourishment but peptonized biscuits and desiccated milk.

Mr. Philip hardly missed her genial presence at St.