II.
"Mr. Ponsonby, do you remember your innate ideas?"
"My how much?" said Mr. Ponsonby.
"The ideas you had before you were born?"
Mr. Ponsonby said, "Before I was born? Well—" He really seemed to be considering it.
Mamma's chair, pushed further along the hearthrug, had driven her back and back, till the box was hidden behind the curtain.
Mr. Ponsonby was Mark's friend. Mark was at the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich now. Every Saturday Mr. Ponsonby came home with Mark and stayed till Sunday evening. You knew that sooner or later he would find you out behind Mamma's chair.
"I mean," she said, "the ideas you were born with."
"Seems to me," said Mr. Ponsonby, "I was born with precious few. Anyhow I can't say I remember them."
"I was afraid you'd say that. It's what Mr. Locke says."
"Mr. how much?"
"Mr. Locke. You can look at him if you like."
She thought: "He won't. He won't. They never, never do."
But Mr. Ponsonby did. He looked at Mr. Locke, and he looked at Mary, and he said, "By Gum!" He even read the bits about the baby and the empty cabinet.
"You don't mean to say you like this sort of thing?"
"I like it most awfully. Of course I don't mean as much as brook-jumping, but almost as much."
And Mr. Ponsonby said, "Well—I must say—of all—you are—by Gum!"
He made it sound like the most delicious praise.
Mr. Ponsonby was taller and older than Mark. He was nineteen. She thought he was the nicest looking person she had ever seen.
His face was the colour of thick white honey; his hair was very dark, and he had long blue eyes and long black eyebrows like bars, drawn close down on to the blue. His nose would have been hooky if it hadn't been so straight, and his mouth was quiet and serious. When he talked to you his mouth and eyes looked as if they liked it.
Mark came and said, "Minky, if you stodge like that you'll get all flabby."
It wasn't nice of Mark to say that before Mr. Ponsonby, when he knew perfectly well that she could jump her own height.
"Me flabby? Feel my muscle."
It rose up hard under her soft skin.
"Feel it, Mr. Ponsonby."
"I say—what a biceps!"
"Yes, but," Mark said, "you should feel his."
His was even bigger and harder than Mark's. "Mine," she said sorrowfully, "will never be as good as his."
Then Mamma came and told her it was bed-time, and Mr. Ponsonby said, "Oh,
Mrs. Olivier, not yet."
"Five minutes more, then."
But the five minutes were never any good. You just sat counting them.
And when it was all over and Mr. Ponsonby strode across the drawing-room and opened the door for her she went laughing; she stood in the doorway and laughed. When you were sent to bed at nine the only dignified thing was to pretend you didn't care.
And Mr. Ponsonby, holding the door so that Mamma couldn't see him, looked at her and shook his head, as much as to say, "You and I know it isn't a joke for either of us, this unrighteous banishment."