"Did you know," she said, "that Charlie'd gone?"
We didn't answer. We simply couldn't.
And then Viola said, "Poor little Norah!"
And she told her to run away for ten minutes while she talked to me.
"Why poor little Norah?" I asked when we were alone.
"Because," she said, "you frightened her."
"I? Frightened her?"
"Yes," she said. "You made her think I was going to run away with Charlie. There's no good trying to look as if you didn't. You're quite awful, Furny, in the things you think. You can't help it, I know. You're so good, so shockingly good, and you can't bear other people to be naughty. You thought I'd run away to Belgium with Jimmy and you came rushing after me and fetched me back. You thought I'd run away with Charlie and you came rushing—in your dreadful rectitude, and in Jimmy's motor-car that he won't let anybody look at. You'll have an awful time with Jimmy when you get back. It's going to rain, and there'll be mud on the car, and he'll dance with rage when he sees it. And he won't think it's any excuse if you tell him you thought I was running away with Charlie, and you took the car to fetch me back; he'll say you'd no business to think it and in any case you'd no business to take the car out. And poor Kendal will be sacked.
"That's all you've done," she said, "by your fussy interference."
She went on. "It wouldn't matter what you think about me—but it was beastly of you to go and make Norah think it."