He sighs loudly, and goes back on his rug.
"Miss Gower is right," says Mrs. Bethune gaily, who has just arrived. "Why don't you go in for Miss Bolton?"
"She wouldn't have me!" says Gower tragically. "I've hinted all sorts of lovely things to her during the past week, but she has been apparently blind to the brilliant prospects opened to her. It has been my unhappy lot to learn that she prefers lollipops to lovers."
"You tried her?" asks Mrs. Chichester.
"Well, I believe I did do a good deal in the chocolate-cream business," says Mr. Gower mildly.
"And she preferred the creams?"
"Oh! much, much!" says Gower.
"So artless of her," says Mrs. Bethune, with a shrug. "I do love the nineteenth-century child!"
"If you mean Miss Bolton, so do I," says a young man who has been listening to them, and laughing here and there—a man from the Cavalry Barracks at Ashbridge. "She's quite out-of-the-way charming."
Mrs. Bethune looks at him—he is only a boy and easily to be subdued, and she is glad of the opportunity of giving some little play to the jealous anger that is raging within her.