"Who is that girl with the jolly laugh and the untidy hair?" she overheard a stranger asking Polly Newland one day.
"That one?" was the reply, given in a contemptuous tone. "Oh, she's a caution, I can tell you! Nice? Oh, I dare say! She's a prig, though. Phyllis Hyam—that's the other girl in our room—thinks all the world of her; but I can't stand prigs, myself."
It was a little shock to her self-esteem to hear herself described so baldly, though she consoled herself by the reflection that Polly had never liked her, and there was consequently very little value to be attached to her opinion. But she was careful to remain silent about her own affairs for the next day or two; and she startled Ted, one evening, by asking him suddenly, between the acts of a melodrama, what was meant by a "prig."
"A prig? Oh, I don't know! It's the same thing as a smug, isn't it?"
"But what is a smug?"
"Well, of course, a smug is—well, he's a smug, I suppose. He hasn't got to be anything else, has he? He's a played-out sort of bounder, who wants to have a good time and hasn't the pluck, don't you know?"
"Are all prigs bounders?" asked Katharine, in a voice of dismay.
"Oh, I expect so! It doesn't matter, does it? At least, there's a chap in our office who is a bit of a prig, and he isn't a bounder exactly. He's a very decent sort of chap, really; I don't half mind him, myself. But they always call him a prig because he goes in for being so mighty saintly; at least, that's what they say. I don't think he is so bad as all that, myself."
"Is it priggish to be good, then? I thought one ought to try."
"My dear Kit, of course you are a girl; don't worry yourself about it. It's altogether different for a girl, don't you see?"