There was one occasion when Mr. Nix, the manager of the flat, very politely, and with the urbanity for which he was famous, warned her that there must not be so much noise at her evening parties. Lois was indignant. "I'll pack up and go. You'd think Nix was Queen Victoria." Nevertheless she did not pack up and go. She knew when she was comfortable. But deep down in her heart something warned her. Did she like all the men who now surrounded her? Was there not something in what Margery said? In France there had been work, heaps of it. Her organising gifts, which were very real, had had full play there. The sense of the position that she had had unsettled her. She wanted to fill her life, to be still of importance, to be admired and sought after and talked of. Yet the men with whom she spent her time were not quite the right men, and sometimes that little voice of warning told her that they went too far, said things to her that they had no right to say, told stories....
But did she not encourage them? Was not that what she wanted? Perfect equality now; no false prudery: the new world in which men and women stood shoulder to shoulder with no false reserves, no silly modesties. If Margery didn't like it, she could go....
But she did not want Margery to go.
Then "Tubby" Grenfell came and the world was changed. Grenfell was nicknamed "Tubby" by his friends because he was round and plump and rosy-faced. Lois did not know it, but she liked him at once because of his resemblance to Margery. He was only a boy, twenty-one years of age, and the apple of his mother's eye. He had done magnificently in France, and now he had gone on to the Stock Exchange, where his uncle was a man of importance and power. He had the same rather helpless appealing innocence that Margery had had. He took life very seriously, but enjoyed it too, laughing a great deal and wanting to see and do everything. His naïveté touched Lois. She told him that she was going to be his elder brother. From the very first he had thought Lois perfectly wonderful, just as Margery had done. He received her dicta about life with the utmost gravity. He came and went just as she told him. He "ate out of her hand," his friends told him.
"Well, I'm proud to," he said.
Unfortunately he and Margery disliked one another from the very beginning. That made difficulties for Lois, and she did not like difficulties.
"What you can see in him," said Margery, "I can't think. He's just the sort of man you despise. Of course he's been brave; but anyone can be brave. The other men laugh at him."
He had a good-natured contempt for Margery.
"It's jolly good of you to look after a girl like that," he said to Lois. "It's just your kindness. I don't know how you can bother."
Lois laughed at both of them, and arranged that they should meet as seldom as possible.