Godfrey promised to dine with them. He explained his position to me afterwards.
“I needn’t tell you, Excellency,” he said, “that I don’t want to go there. I shall get a rotten bad dinner and Mrs. Pringle is a rank outsider.”
“Miss Pringle,” I said, “seems a pleasant girl. She’s certainly pretty.”
“Poor little Tottie!” said Godfrey. “That sort of girl isn’t bad fun sometimes; but I wouldn’t put up with boiled mutton just for the sake of a kiss or two from her. The fact is—”
“Your banking account,” I said.
“That’s it,” said Godfrey. “Pringle’s directors have been writing rather nasty letters lately. It’s perfectly all right, of course, and I told him so; but all the same it’s better to accept his invitation.”
Godfrey is the most unmitigated blackguard I’ve ever met.
“I hardly see Tottie Pringle as the next Lady Kilmore,” said Godfrey; “but, of course, that’s the game.”
I do not believe it. Tottie Pringle—I do not for a moment believe that she ever allowed Godfrey to kiss her—does not look the kind of girl who—