"Well, I think I can see that, Major Merriam. They mustn't flirt with the subalterns? At any rate, not too much?"
"That's rotten. But they ought to teach them their manners."
"Ought to be motherly? You don't look as if that sounded quite right! Elder-sisterly?"
"That's more like it, Miss Wilson."
He said 'Miss Wilson' rather often, or so it struck Winnie—just as Bob Purnett used to say 'Mrs. Ledstone' much too often. He gave her another little jar the next moment. He left the subject of officers' wives, and leant forward to her with an ingratiating yet rather apologetic smile.
"I say, do you know what the General has had the cheek to suggest to your cousin?"
Winnie had forgotten her cue. "My cousin?" she exclaimed in surprise.
"Why, Mrs. Lenoir! She is your cousin, isn't she?"
The lie direct Winnie disliked. Yet could she betray her benefactress? "It's so awfully distant that I forget the cousin in the friend," she said, with an uneasy little laugh. "But what has the General had the cheek—your phrase, not mine—to suggest to Mrs. Lenoir?" She seemed to have forgotten the cousin again, for she said 'Mrs. Lenoir,' not 'Cousin Clara.' As, however, the Major had never heard her say anything else, the point did not attract his notice.
"Why, that we four might make a party of it as far as Madeira. Nice little place, though I suppose it won't be as lively now as it was when the war was going on."