“What you seem quite unable to perceive is the way in which these incidents reflect upon your good taste and upon my guardianship.”
Hal grew suddenly nettled.
“It is nonsense to talk of guardianship now. I am twenty-five, and I earn my own living. I am perfectly well able to take care of myself.”
“No; that is just what you are not. You are so rash and inconsequent.”
“Well, anyhow I get a good deal out of my life, while you—”
He remembered his own Thursday evening and intercepted:
“It is possible to get a great deal out of life without outraging every convention. Do you imagine either Ethel or Doris Hayward would do the wild things you do?”
“Ethel Hayward is a brick. She couldn’t be straitlaced anyhow, nor narrow-minded. Doris would do anything under the sun that suited her own ends.”
She got up, and turned away without perceiving his frown, beginning to gather up her paraphernalia. He stopped short in his walk.
“If it really was Sir Edwin Crathie who brought you home, I must write and thank him, I think.”