“I expect you’ve had no end of an education,” he said with a little sigh.
“Why do you think that?”
“I know you have.”
She didn’t think well to undeceive him.
“You know everything.” A very naïf young man. “Seen no end of the world. I daresay you’ve been abroad teaching English to the children of foreign royalties.”
She smiled enigmatically. But even if his shot was a good one it didn’t explain her. This girl was a mystery. And no doubt she was “pulling his leg,” just as she had pulled the leg of Mrs. Trenchard-Simpson the other day at luncheon when she solemnly assured her that her father was a butler and her mother a lady’s maid. As he remembered that piece of impertinence he had a sudden desire to box her adorable ears.
Although, he did not let his mind dwell very long on any such form of emotional luxury. “I wish I knew the ropes as you do.” A cloud came upon a singularly frank and manly countenance. “You see, I want to go on with my job, but I’m afraid”—he sighed heavily—“I’m hardly up to it in peace time.”
She asked why, having done so well in the war, he was not going to be equal to the peace?
“Now the fighting’s over you need other things. Influence and education and so on.”
“Don’t you know anybody who could pull strings?” A chord of real sympathy fused a voice that had a knack at such odd, unexpected moments as these of sounding quite delightful.