But some of us would rather be happy with a charming "rotter" than be bored for life by one of those prigs who never do anything wrong.
Haggardly I stared at that letter with its gold-printed "Muriel" at the top, its whiff of Chaminade. Little Elizabeth scowled sympathetically. She always had had a grimace for the name of Captain Harry Markham, who had been my idol for the last year.
(A rotter! What difference does that make!)
For that year life was a whirl of thrills and pangs because of one young soldier-man's black eyes and red tabs. At first it was all thrill. That's bound to be when the Harry-type—a born fighter and philanderer—leader of men and misleader of women—fills up a girl's horizon with his telephone-calls, his invitations, his flatteries—and himself.
Feverishly happy, I blessed the job that kept me where he was.
(And now this! This!)
My job was one of those that are described as "thundering good for a girl." It brought me in nearly three pounds a week, for I was secretary to a quite important official in one of those big rabbit-warren buildings in Whitehall that we call Ministries. It kept me indoors from ten A.M. until half-past six or seven or—if we'd a rush of work—eight o'clock at night.
It kept nerve and brain on the stretch, too! My chief insisted upon taking the last ounce out of his under-strappers. Also, he had a horrible temper. But I accepted that as cheerfully as I accepted the stuffiness of that rabbit-warren, and the rushed lunches, and the work that was draining all the go-stuff out of me.
You see, my people lived in the country, and—because of Harry—I simply had to live in town. It would have killed me, I thought, to tear myself away from London and from our flat near Golder's Green. This had been let, furnished, by an officer, now at the front, to me and my old school-chum, Elizabeth Weare, who was clerk at my rabbit-warren. We did our own housework and marketing and cooking, tired as we were, after our office-day was done. Sounds rather like all work and no play? But it wasn't.
There was play, to take it out of me more than work. Play turned my days into a succession of wild jumps across stepping-stones. The stones, of course, were the times when Harry took me out. I would have worked underground and consented never to see the light of day, provided that I still saw him. Ah, I'm not the first girl who has made Paradise out of bricks and mortar, just because they hold a Harry!