"Here's where I get dumb," I said, sort of casual to encourage her.
"Sylvia Hesketh's a girl that needs a strong hand over her and there's no one has it. Her father's dead, her mother—poor Mrs. Fowler's only a grown-up baby ready to say black is white if her husband wants her to—and Dr. Fowler's trying to do it and he's going about it all wrong. You see," she said, turning to me very serious, "it's not only that she's head-strong and extravagant but she's an incorrigible flirt."
"Is there a place in the back of the book where you can find out what incorrigible means?" I said.
Anne smiled, but not as if she felt like it.
"Uncontrollable, irrepressible. Her mother—Mrs. Fowler's ready to tell me anything and everything—says she's always been like that. And, of course, with her looks and her fortune the men are around her like flies round honey."
"Why does the Doctor mind that?"
"I suppose he wouldn't mind if they just came to Mapleshade or Longwood. But—that's what the quarreling's about—he's found out that she meets them in town, goes to lunch and the matinée with them."
"Excuse me, but I've left my etiquette book on the piano. What's wrong about going to the matinée or to lunch?"
"Nothing's really wrong. Mind you, Molly, I know Sylvia through and through and there's no harm in her—it's just the bringing-up and the spoiling and the admiration. But, of course, in her position, a girl doesn't go about that way without a chaperone. The Doctor's perfectly right to object."
I was looking down, pretending to hunt over the box.