“Yes, I said Friday and you said you would come. Don’t try to make out now that you misunderstood me,” cried Amber.
“I’m not going to try. Only——”
“Only what? Why should you dislike meeting Mr. Winwood? Did you expect me to ask Guy Overton or Mr. Richmond—or was it Arthur you had set your heart on? Didn’t you find Mr. Win-wood entertaining?”
“Entertaining? Entertaining?” Josephine looked at her strangely for a few moments and then gave a laugh. “Entertaining?” she said again. “I really never gave a thought to the question as to whether he was entertaining or the reverse. The men who entertain one are not always the people one wants to meet again. I think that there’s hardly any one so dull as the man who tries to be entertaining.”
“Then what have you against Mr. Winwood?” asked Amber.
“Did I say that I had somewhat against him?” cried Josephine quickly and with quite unnecessary vehemence. “Now, don’t say that I suggested to you that I disliked this Mr. Winwood. I was only—only surprised. Why should you ask me to meet him again? There was no need for me ever to meet him again. People come together at dinner or at a dance and separate and—and—that’s all right. Why shouldn’t this Mr. Winwood be allowed to drift away after this comfortable and accommodating manner?”
Amber stared at her. Her face was almost flushed with the vehemence of her words, and there was a strange sparkle in her eyes. Amber stared at this inexplicable display of feeling. She wondered what on earth had come over her friend Josephine, and had opened her mouth to say so, when Josephine prevented her speaking.
“Now, don’t say—what you’re going to say,” she cried, lifting up both her hands in an exaggerated attitude of protest which, however, but imperfectly concealed the increased flush upon her face. “Don’t say that I’m an idiot, my beloved girl, because I happen to have—to have taken an unaccountable dislike to your Mr. Winwood. I haven’t—I give you my word I haven’t in reality—as a matter of fact I think that I could almost like him, if I did not—that is to say, if I did not—do the other thing. There you are now.”
“What’s the other thing?” asked Amber.
“Good gracious! what’s the opposite to liking a man?”