Gwinnie had climbed up on to the bed to hear about it. She sat hunched up with her arms round her knees rocking herself on the end of her spine; and though she stared she still rocked. She was happy and excited because of her holiday.
"It can't make any difference, Gwin. I'm the same Charlotte. Don't tell me you didn't know I was like that."
"Of course I knew it. I know a jolly lot more than you think, kid."
"I'm not a kid—if you are two years older."
"Why—you're not twenty-four yet…. It's the silliness of it beats me.
Going off like that, with the first silly cuckoo that turns up."
"He wasn't the first that turned up, I mean. He was the third that counted. There was poor Binky, the man I was engaged to. And Dicky Raikes; he wanted me to go to Mexico with him. Just for a lark, and I wouldn't. And George Corfield. He wanted me to marry him. And I wouldn't."
"Why didn't you?"
"Because Dicky's always funny when you want to be serious and George is always serious when you want to be funny. Besides, he's so good. His goodness would have been too much for me altogether. Fancy beginning with George."
"This seems to have been a pretty rotten beginning, anyway."
"The beginning was all right. It's the end that's rotten. The really awful thing was Effie."