Just because Harry's father, that self-made man, hadn't "made" himself in time to send his son to a public school? Didn't that seem rather like ... well, hideous snobbery?
Further, for a girl to let a man take her out to the theatre, the opera—for her to accept innumerable dinners and taxi-drives from him, and then for her to sum him up to another girl as "not a gentleman"—didn't it sound like ... to put it kindly, ill-breeding?
It surprised me so from Muriel because after all she was a lady!
But——
Would any girl who was a gentlewoman at heart have been guilty of such a remark?
And did Captain Holiday, who also—as I believed—wanted to marry Muriel—did he know that she was the sort of girl who would say such a thing?
I was resentfully wondering over that as the pink and mauve figure of Muriel slipped back to her seat at the piano. I returned to my chair next to Sybil, and the second part of the soldiers' concert began.
Now the opening item was a clog-dance by a merry-faced, one-armed Lancashire Fusilier. It was good; but I could not fix any attention on the stage just then.
Was Muriel going to marry Captain Holiday, who had now drawn up a chair close beside hers at the piano? Or did she mean after all to take Harry? Which? Which? Did she know herself, yet?
And—here an odd thought came to me as those clogs pattered faster than a shower of summer rain—did I myself know which of those two young men I least wanted Muriel to marry?