'Thank you,' said Hilary. 'I should feel a good deal safer in the box-room. And then, who's going to attack us?'
'Well, you never know,' replied Clarence; 'but, if they did come, it's something to feel we should be able to defend ourselves.'
'Yes, Hilary,' Cecily remarked, 'an army would certainly be a great convenience then.'
'That would depend on what it did,' said her sister. 'It wouldn't be much of a convenience if it ran away.'
'I don't think Jack and Guy would ever do that,' observed Hazel.
'I suppose that means that you think I should?' inquired Clarence, who was quick at discovering personal allusions.
'I wasn't thinking about you at all,' said Hazel, with supreme indifference; 'we don't know you well enough to say whether you're brave or not—we do know our brothers.'
'There wouldn't be much sense in my being the General if I wasn't the bravest, would there?' he demanded.
'Well, as to that, you see,' retorted Hilary, 'we don't see much sense in any of it.'