‘Fancied or real, such an existence would never do for me. I have not much taste for obedience. I have none at all for household worries. Babies I bar.’
‘Miss Bartrand!’
‘Yes, I do. Grandpapa and I visit about in our Pagan way among the Guernsey country people, and I know that I absolutely bar babies of every shade and degree. I am not sure I would go so far as to injure one,’ said Marjorie, stealing a glance at her companion’s shocked face; ‘but I feel that they are safest kept out of my sight. I tell the mothers so.’
‘You are too young to know what you feel, Miss Bartrand.’ There was a standstill of some moments ere Dinah recovered herself enough to speak. ‘Long before you are my age you’ll begin to see things differently. Young girls are a bit hard, I’ve sometimes thought, in all classes of life, until the time comes.’
‘What time, may I ask?’
‘The time for having a sweetheart and getting married,’ said Dinah Arbuthnot.
From any other lips Marjorie would have regarded such a suggestion as an indignity. Dinah was so true a woman, had a soul so whitely delicate, that the speech carried with it no possible suspicion of offence. It was homely common sense, kindly and simply uttered.
‘What you say might be true of most girls of my age. If I am hard, it is not because of my youth, or my inexperience. I have had’—Marjorie’s face flamed to the hue of the poppies in the corn—‘what the world is pleased to call a sweetheart. But for the interposition of Providence (I remember that interposition, night and morning, on my knees) I should be married now.’
‘Unless he loved you above everything, you are best as you are, Miss Bartrand. In marriage it is all or nothing. I mean—I mean,’ Dinah hesitated, ‘no wife could be happy with half a heart bestowed on her.’