"I don't say it's entered hers. The pretty rogue told me she never fell in love, and made me wish I was thirty years younger, and free to test her. But she's very fond of you, Andy."
"I think what she told you about herself is true. She said something like it to me too. But I'm glad you think she likes me. I like her immensely. Outside this house, she's my best friend, I think, not counting old Jack Rock, of course."
"I believe Vivien would dispute the title with her. She thinks the world of you."
"I say, Mr. Belfield, you'll turn my head. Seriously, I should be awfully happy to think that true. There's nobody—well, nobody in the world I'd rather be liked by."
"Yes, I think I know that," said Belfield. "And I'm glad to think she's got such a friend, if she ever needs one."
A silence followed. Belfield was thinking of Vivien, thinking that she would have been in safer hands with Andy than with his son Harry; glad, as he had said, to know that she would have such a friend left to her after his own precarious lease of life was done. Andy was thinking too, but not of Vivien, not of sentimental complications—not even of Harry's. Yet the thought which he was pursuing in his mind was not altogether out of relation to Harry, though the relation was one that he did not consciously trace.
"Back to work next week, sir!" he said. "Gilly's clamouring for me. I've had a splendid holiday."
"You've put in some very good work in your holiday. Your speeches are thought good."
"I somehow feel that I'm on my own legs now," said Andy slowly. "I hope I've not grown bumptious, but I'm not afraid now to think for myself and to say what I think. I often find people agree with me more or less."
"Perhaps you persuade them," Belfield suggested; he was listening with interest, for he had watched from outside the growth of Andy's mind, and liked to hear Andy's own account of it.