"Oh, mother, you're awfully trying you know," she cried in mock despair. "You've got to suppose that I have, or could. Why should I do it?" Mrs. West gazed at her daughter a little anxiously, then shook her head.
"Now I can quite understand," went on Dorothy, half to herself, "why a man should fall in love with me. I'm pretty and bright, wear nice things, particularly underneath——"
"Dorothy!" broke in Mrs. West in a tone of shocked protest.
She laughed. "Oh, mother, you're a dreadful prude. Why do you think girls wear pretty shoes and stockings, and low cut blouses as thin as a cobweb?"
"Hush! Dorothy, you mustn't say such things." There was pain in Mrs. West's voice.
"I wish we could face facts," said Dorothy with a sigh. "You see, mother dear," she continued, "when you're in a government office, with heaps of other girls and men about, you get to know things, see things, and sometimes you get to hate things."
"I have always regretted," began Mrs. West sadly.
"You mustn't do that, mother dear," cried Dorothy; "it has been an education. But what I want to know is, what is it in a man that attracts a girl?"
"Goodness, honour and——" began Mrs. West.
"No, it isn't," said Dorothy, "at least they don't attract me."