"I suppose it's the way that sort of thing gets done," said Marjorie, after an interval.
"That sort of thing doesn't get done," snapped Trafford. "All these people burble about with their movements and jobs, and lectures and stuff—and things happen. Like some one getting squashed to death in a crowd. Nobody did it, but anybody in the muddle can claim to have done it—if only they've got the cheek of your Aunt Plessington."
He seemed to have finished.
"Done!" he suddenly broke out again. "Why! people like your Aunt Plessington don't even know where the handle is. If they ventured to look for it, they'd give the whole show away! Done, indeed!"
"Here we are!" said Marjorie, a little relieved to find the hansom turning out of King's Road into their own side street....
And then Marjorie wore the blue dress with great success at the Carmels'. The girls came and looked at it and admired it—it was no mere politeness. They admitted there was style about it, a quality—there was no explaining. "You're wonderful, Madge!" cried the younger Carmel girl.
The Carmel boy, seizing the opportunity of a momentary seclusion in a corner, ended a short but rather portentous silence with "I say, you do look ripping," in a voice that implied the keenest regret for the slacknesses of a summer that was now infinitely remote to Marjorie. It was ridiculous that the Carmel boy should have such emotions—he was six years younger than Trafford and only a year older than Marjorie, and yet she was pleased by his manifest wound....
There was only one little thing at the back of her mind that alloyed her sense of happy and complete living that night, and that was the ghost of an addition sum. At home, in her pretty bureau, a little gathering pile of bills, as yet unpaid, and an empty cheque-book with appealing counterfoils, awaited her attention.
Marjorie had still to master the fact that all the fine braveries and interests and delights of life that offer themselves so amply to the favoured children of civilization, trail and, since the fall of man at any rate, have trailed after them something—something, the justification of morality, the despair of all easy, happy souls, the unavoidable drop of bitterness in the cup of pleasure—the Reckoning.