‘What lovely ages!’ cries Lady Forster. ‘George, why didn’t you tell me about Susan’s boys? You know I adore boys. Susan, you must bring them up to-morrow. Do you hear?’
‘They will be so glad,’ says Susan; ‘do you know’—blushing shyly and divinely—‘they were quite envious of me because I was coming here to-day.’
‘Oh! why didn’t you bring them with you? Seventeen and twenty—the nicest ages in the world!’
‘Certainly not the nicest,’ says Lennox, who is a born tease. ‘You, Miss Barry’—looking at Susan—‘are thirteen, aren’t you?’
‘Oh no; much, much more than that!’ says Susan, laughing. Strangely enough, she has begun to feel quite a liking for her tormentor, divining with the wisdom of youth that his saucy sallies are filled with mischief only, and no venom. ‘I was eighteen last May.’
‘How very candid!’ says Miss Prior, whose own age is growing uncertain, and who is feeling a little bitter over the attention paid to Susan. If Paul should prove inconstant, there is always the master of the Park to fall back upon, or so she has fondly hoped till now. But there is no denying the fact that Crosby has been very anxious all this afternoon about Susan’s happiness.
‘Nonsense!’ says Lennox. ‘Tell that to—well, to somebody else.’
‘But that’s what I am really,’ says Susan, who is secretly disgusted at being thought thirteen. ‘I was born in—’
‘Don’t tell that,’ says Lady Forster, putting up her finger. ‘It will be fatal twenty years hence.’
‘Still, I’m not thirteen,’ says Susan, with gentle protest. ‘And I think anyone could see that I’m not.’