The boy is father to the man, so also is the girl to the woman. Margery, with secret glee, saw that David was feeling better, and inclined to be interested.
“Yes, you did tell me,” she said penitently; “but I forgot. Sorry, David.”
“Oh, that’s all right. I forget lots of things. I say, it’s an awful pity you’re a girl, Margery. You would have been such a ripping boy.”
“I dare say I should have got on all right,” said she. “Or perhaps you might have been a girl.”
“Me a girl?” said David. “But I couldn’t. Think of the things girls have to do. It’s ridiculous.”
Margery felt she must stand up for her sex.
“I don’t see that the things we have to do are more ridiculous than your smoking, or keeping those beastly stag-beetles,” said she, for she shared Bags’s horror of that which crawled.
David got up with extraordinary dignity.
“Those are the things I told you in confidence,” he said.
“Well, and whom have I told?” demanded Margery.