"I don't know. I should be glad to believe it."
"And—I think—" hesitatingly—"I am quite sure there must be some sparkle and lightness in everybody. Only it wants cultivating, doesn't it?"
"That may be a suggestion worth attending to," Edred said, with a rather melancholy smile. "We have got into an odd personal talk, Miss Tracy. I don't often indulge in remarks about myself; but since we are on the subject, I do not mind saying that I am conscious of a certain want. Too grave a manner is taken for moodiness by some people, and perhaps it repels them, when a little more of sunshine—a manner mere like Mervyn's—would attract."
Dorothea had never liked Edred so well, even while she began to fear that she had spoken too freely. It certainly was not her business to tell him of his failures, whether in manner or aught else; and the instinctive wish to defend Mervyn, which had lain below her utterances, was not even acknowledged to herself, much less could it be allowed to appear to Edred.
"It always seems to me that manner is the hardest thing in the world to manage," she said. "One is told to be perfectly natural, and then one finds that what is natural is wrong; and if one tries to change, one is called affected. At least, that is a girl's difficulty sometimes—at school. But you were going to tell me about Craye. There is a Colonel Erskine living near your home?"
"Yes—" Edred shrank suddenly into his shell.
Dorothea saw the change, thought of Mervyn's remarks about "Dolly," and mischievously resolved to persevere.
"And he has a wife and three daughters?"
"Yes."
"Named Miss Erskine, Miss Margot Erskine, and Miss Dolly Erskine?"