‘Susan is a beauty,’ says Betty; ‘we all know that. Even James went down before her. Poor James! I wonder what he is doing now.’
‘Stewing in the Soudan,’ says Carew.
‘He was always in one sort of stew or another,’ says Dominick, ‘so it will come kindly to him. And after Susan’s heartless behaviour—’
‘Dom!’ says Susan, in an awful tone. But Mr. Fitzgerald is beyond the reach of tones.
‘Oh, it’s all very well your taking it like that now,’ says he; ‘but when poor old James was here it was a different thing.’
‘It was not,’ says Susan indignantly.
‘Are you going to deny that he was your abject slave—that he sat in your pocket from morning till night—well, very nearly night? That he followed you from place to place like a baa-lamb? That you did not encourage him in the basest fashion?’
‘I never encouraged him. Encourage him! That boy!’
‘Don’t call him names, Susan, behind his back,’ says Betty, whose mischievous nature is now all afire, and who is as keen about the baiting of Susan as either Carew or Dom. ‘Besides, what a boy he is! He must be twenty-two, at all events.’ This seems quite old to Betty.
‘What did you do with the keepsake he gave you when he was going away?’ asks Carew. He is lying flat upon the warm grass, his chin upon his palms, and looks up at Susan with judicial eyes. ‘What was it? I forget now. A lock of his lovely hair?’