'I don't care to go off there to see a pack of women,' the girl replied, still drumming her fingers on the window-pane.
'Now, Olive, don't answer so crossly, but come and sit down here by me;' and, to make room for her, Mrs. Barton moved nearer to Alice. 'So my beautiful Olive doesn't care for a pack of women,' said Mrs. Barton—'Olive does not like a pack of women; she would prefer a handsome young lord, or a duke, or an earl.'
Olive turned up her lips contemptuously, for she guessed her mother's meaning.
'What curious lives those girls do lead, cooped up there by themselves, with their little periodical trip up to the Shelbourne Hotel. Of course the two young ones never could have done much; they never open their lips, but Gladys is a nice girl in her way, and she has some money of her own, I wonder she wasn't picked up.'
'I should like to know who would care for her?'
'She had a very good chance once; but she wouldn't say yes, and she wouldn't say no, and she kept him hanging after her until at last off he went and married someone else. A Mr. Blake, I think.'
'Yes, that was his name; and why wouldn't she marry him?'
'Well, I don't know—folly, I suppose. He was, of course, not so young as Harry Renley, but he had two thousand a year, and he would have made her an excellent husband; kept a carriage for her, and a house in London: whereas you see she has remained Miss Brennan, goes up every year to the Shelbourne Hotel to buy dresses, and gets older and more withered every day.'
'I know they lead a stupid life down here, but mightn't they go abroad and travel?' asked Alice; 'they are no longer so very young.'
'A woman can do nothing until she is married,' Mrs. Barton answered decisively.