‘Still at that kind of thing!’ exclaimed Alfred. ‘My good child, if you want to paint, why don’t you paint in earnest? Really, Adela, I must enter a protest! Remember that you are eighteen years of age.’
‘I don’t forget it, Alfred.’
‘At eight-and-twenty, at eight-and-thirty, you propose still to be at the same stage of development?’
‘I don’t think we’ll talk of it,’ said the girl quietly. ‘We don’t understand each other.’
‘Of course not, but we might, if only you’d read sensible books that I could give you.’
Adela shook her head. The philosophical youth sank into his favourite attitude—legs extended, hands in pockets, nose in air.
‘So, I suppose,’ he said presently, ‘that fellow really has been ill?’
Adela was sitting in thought; she looked up with a shadow of annoyance on her face.
‘That fellow?’
‘Eldon, you know.’