"What was her face like?"
"Well, to tell you the truth, I was so surprised at the way she slanged me that I didn't take much notice—except afterwards, and then I thought it was all jolly rum, and that there must have been something else. And she was so decent about it afterwards, and said she was sorry she'd spoken to me like that, and asked me not to tell the others."
"Ah!" said Jimmy. "That tells a tale."
"Well, what do you think about it?" asked Young George.
"I think I'll have a cigarette, after all," said Jimmy. "It helps you to think."
He lit one elaborately, and blew the smoke out of his nose with a reflective air, while Young George waited anxiously for the result of his deliberation.
"What happened was this, George," he said. "He proposed to her, and she meant him to. But she wasn't ready to give in at once, and he got annoyed. She gave him to understand that if he didn't like it he could lump it, not thinking he'd take it seriously. Now, lots of men don't know that you needn't take any account of what a girl says. It's often the opposite of what she means. Girls are like that. What you can say is that Mansergh didn't know enough. He gets shirty, and of course that simply makes her worse. Then he clears out, and the moment he's gone she's sorry. Was she crying, by the bye, when she was standing at the window?"
"No," said Young George doubtfully. "I'm not sure, though, now I come to think of it, that she didn't later on. She almost did when she apologised to me for slanging me."
"Poor little girl!" said Jimmy tenderly. "It really makes you feel rather soft towards them, the way they show their feelings, doesn't it? I tell you, Grafton, a girl could do almost anything she liked with me—a pretty girl, that is—if she only knew her power, and how to use it. Never do to let them know, though. I think, myself, Mansergh was quite right not to let her get the bulge over him in that way, and to clear out."
"I thought you said just now that he cleared out because he didn't know enough."