“I am nineteen now,” Bee continued, “and I can see plainly if you don’t get engaged by the time you are as old as that there is very little chance for you nowadays. Look at my sisters, four of them older than I and not one of them engaged. And poor old Floss is thirty-four—though of course that’s a secret, Dora.”
“Oh, of course,” said Dora.
“Well, I’m not going to take any risks,” continued Bee; “I decided that before I left school last year. Five disengaged Miss Kings are too frightful to contemplate. I shall not [p174] be as particular as the girls have been; Floss threw away one excellent chance just because the man was only five feet.”
“Oh, Bee,” said Dora pathetically, “of course she did! Five feet! Why, I am five feet!”
Bee shook her wise head.
“If there aren’t enough six-foot men to go round you’ve got to put up with the five-foot ones,” she said inexorably. “I have quite decided that the first real man who asks me I shall accept. I don’t mean silly boys like Charlie and Graham, of course, who are only just starting their medical course and then have to buy a practice and make it pay before they can marry. Why, we should have crow’s-feet round our eyes, and thin, scraggy necks”—she passed a hand over her plump young neck—“and be left to sit out at dances, if we waited for them!”
“I—I suppose so, Bee,” said Dora faintly.
“Now, Dora!” said Bee sternly, “this won’t do. I saw you trying to hide the address on the envelope you posted this morning. You’ve written another letter to that Graham.”
“It was a very short one, Bee,” said Dora meekly.
“Well, it won’t do. Do, dear, you be guided by me and you will live to thank me,” said Beatrice.