“Mamma seems to feel nothing definite about it, and I couldn’t get anything out of her. She said something vague about being an actress! I suppose she’s at that age.”
And Sylvia smiled good-naturedly as she looked into the fire.
“She’s not happy here?” David asked, slowly.
“Yes, in a way I think she is. She’s young, of course, to try her wings, and Mamma says she is really very conscientious about her practising and languages. But of course this isn’t the place for her.”
“Isn’t?” David asked, looking up.
“No. In the first place, it’s too dull. In the second——”
“Why, there are some nice kids over at Crowchester,” David suggested, “and she seems happy here. Then you’ll be home at midsummer——”
“Yes, I know, David,” Sylvia said, with a sudden colour in her face. “But at the same time I don’t feel that just idling here is quite the right solution for Gay. And I think it my duty, in a way, to think out, for her, what is the right solution,” added Sylvia, with a smile. “She’s handsome—she has her mother’s most unfortunate experience back of her, and—if she should marry even six or eight years from now, it would surely be better to launch her first into some interesting and absorbing line of work.”
“She may marry before that!” David said, with a significant half smile. “She had her first offer, it appears, on the night of the dance, and she was quite upset about it.”
“Her first offer!” Sylvia echoed, in stupefaction. “One of the Crowchester boys?”