“Oh, give the dear ‘girl’ forty-five at least!” said a Chivalrous Youth, declining tea, and helping himself to a whisky-soda at the side-board.
“They say she was jilted.”
“No wonder!” And a bleating laugh followed this suggestion.
“I suppose,” remarked one man of gloomy countenance and dyspeptic eye, “I suppose it’s really unpardonable for a woman to get out of her twenties and remain unmarried, but if it happens so I don’t see what’s to be done with her.”
“Smother her!” said the Chivalrous Youth, drinking his whisky.
Everybody laughed. What a witty boy he was!—no wonder his mother was proud of him!
“We shall have to ask her to one or two tennis parties,” said the woman who had first spoken. “We can’t leave her out altogether.”
“She doesn’t play,” said the gloomy man. “She told me so. She reads Greek.”
A shrill chorus of giggles in falsetto greeted this announcement.
“Reads Greek! How perfectly dreadful! A blue-stocking!”