“Ah, I’m sick of them. I wish they’d go back to Shâlalai.”
“I don’t altogether believe that. Which is the favoured one, by the way?”
“No, really. I rather like Captain Fleming, though.” She laughed, branching off with the light-hearted inconsequence of her type. “And—I don’t know what to do. He’s awfully gone on me.”
“And are you ‘awfully gone’ on him?”
“Of course not. But I rather like him. I don’t know what to do about it.”
“You don’t know whether to buckle yourself for life to some one you ‘rather like’—or not. Is that the long and short of it?”
“Yes.”
“If you are a little idiot, Nessie, you will do it—if you are not, you won’t. You are dreadfully lacking in ballast, my child, even to dream of such a thing, are you not?”
“I suppose so. I don’t care a straw for anybody for more than a week or so. Then I am just as sick of them as I can be. That’s how I am.”
“Except on that solitary occasion when you did take someone seriously. Tell me about that, Nessita.”