the army? What does he do?"

"He--he's a sort of engineer."

"An engineer? A civil engineer? That's not bad; they do do things worth doing--they and an explorer here and there, and the flying men--I like them best. I like courage, physical courage, it's far more interesting than moral. I shouldn't think your cousin would ever know what it was to feel afraid. And wouldn't he never tell a lie?"

"Never," said Lettice, her eyes straying to her Latin grammar.

"Not even to save a friend? He'd do anything else, take any risk himself, but just not that? So that if he was pushed into a corner he'd have to tell the truth? That's just what I should have expected. Of course there are a few things I have against him," Dorothea ran on, seemingly at random, though her downcast eyes were glowing. "He shouldn't like cats, nasty treacherous things, they're not a man's animal. And he shouldn't sing the hymns on Sunday out of that big book with tunes. Going to church is all right, and suits him, but I can't bear that book. It's like the W.S.P.A." Presumably Miss O'Connor meant the Y.M.C.A. "Mr. Gardiner's his very greatest friend, isn't he? Would he tell lies, do you think?"

"I don't know," said Lettice, far down the passive voice of _amo_.

"What do you think of him?"

"I think he's very nice."

Out shot Dorothea's arm, and Lettice, amazed, aggrieved, found herself being vigorously shaken. "Do _not_ talk like that! I never in my life knew any one so--so perfectly systematically untruthful as you are! I don't believe you've once this morning said one single thing you really mean!" (But she was wrong, for Lettice had done so--once.) "Tell me what you think of Mr. Gardiner. Tell me. I want to know."

Lettice, chafing her arm, mutely reproachful, indicated the creases which Dorothea's grip had left on her pale blue linen sleeve. "You, you, you--you are so _violent_," she complained in her _pianissimo_ drawl, which held always a hint of make-believe. "I don't know what you mean. I do think Mr. Gardiner is very nice." Then for the second time she let out a little piece of truth. "I shouldn't think he'd take failure well."

"Oh." Abrupt silence. Dorothea sprang up and wandered off into the forest, slashing at the brambles with her stick, jumping over logs that came in her way, just as a boy might have done. Indeed she looked like a boy in her 

 Prev. P 49/255 next