"My dear boy, I'm not," said Ben. "I have always liked you and I always shall like you, but marriage is so different. Please don't ask me any more, there's a dear, Tommy."
She had said "Certainly not" with some firmness to Tommy's question about her landlords; but was it true? She pondered on the matter that night as she lay awake. Was she so insensitive to them? Would she absolutely turn down a proposal from either? And if she had a preference for one, which was it? Mr. Harford, so quick and gay and handsome and clean cut and impulsive, or Mr. St. Quentin, so quiet and amusing and lonely and in need of care? But whosoever she married, if she married at all—and why should she, for her life was very full of interest; this "Beck and Call" affair was very absorbing and it had got to be made a success; and marriage seemed so often to be the end of girls; look at poor Enid Stuart, what a wreck of a life that used to be such a lark; look at poor Daisy Forsiter, all her jolliness gone since she married that selfish young Greg—time enough to think of marriage two or three years hence when she was tired of being so busy.
So her thoughts ran.
Poor Tommy! Whosoever she married, if she married at all, would have to have more variety than that, be more of a companion. If she married at all. Someone who did everything with an air, with a natural commanding address, like, well, Jack Harford was rather like that—"Good morning, O'Reilly, you are looking well"—someone who had humour and sagacity and was in need of mothering a little like—well, Pat St. Quentin was not unlike that—"My bonnie lies over the sea." But there were plenty of other men, too, if she really wanted one, and it was ridiculous to allow such a trifling business accident as renting an upper floor from two young men to make these two young men the inevitable two from which she had to choose a partner for life. What rubbish!
XXI
Ben chanced to be in the front office one morning when two children came in: a boy and a girl. They looked about twelve and ten.
"Well?" she asked.