“Wants to go on the stage, does she?” said Monkley, who was in the room. “Well, you’d better introduce us and we’ll see what we can do. Eh, Harry?”
Sylvia approved of this suggestion and eagerly vouched for Maudie’s willingness.
“We’ll have a little supper-party,” said Monkley. “Sil can go round and tell her we’re coming.”
Sylvia blessed the persistency with which she had worried Clara on the subject of racing; otherwise, bisexual and solitary, she might have been moping in Lillie Road. She hoped that Maudie Tilt would not offer any objections to the proposed party, and determined to point out most persuasively the benefit of Monkley’s patronage, if she really meant to go on the stage. However, Maudie was not at all difficult to convince and showed herself as eager for the party as Sylvia herself. She was greatly impressed by her visitor’s experience of the stage, but reckoned that no boys should have pinched her legs or given her the broken masks.
“You ought to have punched into them,” she said. “Still, I dare say it wasn’t so easy for you, not being a girl. Boys are very nasty to one another, when they’d be as nice as anything to a girl.”
Sylvia was conscious of a faint feeling of contempt for Maudie’s judgment, and she wondered from what her illusions were derived.
Clara, when she heard of the proposed party, was dubious. She had no confidence in Monkley, and said so frankly.
“No one wants to go chasing after a servant-girl for nothing,” she declared. “Every cloud’s got a silver lining.”
“But what could he want to do wrong?” Sylvia asked.
“Ah, now you’re asking. But if I was Maudie Tilt I’d keep myself to myself.”