Ralph’s eyebrows went up in expressive disdain.
“Re-al-ly! You don’t say so! Glad to hear it, I’m shaw! The kind donors would be much gratified to know of the magic effect of their gifts. I wonder, under the circumstances, that you could bear to part from any of them!”
The words were spoken in his most drawling and superior voice, and brought the blood rushing into Darsie’s cheeks. She stood still in the middle of the road, and glared at him with flashing eyes.
“Horrible boy! What a disagreeable mind you must have, to think such mean, contemptible thoughts! Bother the jewellery! It may go to Jericho for all I care. I’m happy for a very different reason. Aunt Maria has just promised to pay for me to go to Newnham, and that has been the dream of my life. There’s nothing to sneer at, you see, though perhaps you can manage to be superior even about that!”
“Yes, easily. I hate blue-stockings,” said Ralph calmly, but his eyes twinkled as he spoke, and in spite of herself Darsie was obliged to smile in response.
“And I hate narrow-minded, prejudiced young men! Oh dear! you’ve put me in a bad temper on this day of days, just when I felt that I could never be cross again. I’ll forgive you only because it’s impossible to go on being cross. I’ve just been to the post-office to telegraph the great news to my people at the seaside. They’ll be wild with excitement, especially my chum who will be going up at the same time, Hannah Vernon—‘plain Hannah’ we call her. Funny nickname, isn’t it?”
“Sounds ingratiating!” Voice and expression were alike so expressive that Darsie went off into a merry trill of laughter, as she hastened to take up the cudgels in plain Hannah’s defence.
“She doesn’t care a bit. Jokes about it with the rest. And she is so funnily ugly that it’s really rather dear. And clever! She’ll be a first-class girl, you’ll see if she isn’t. I shall be nowhere beside her, but I’m going to grind. Let me see: if we go up in three years’ time, when we’re eighteen, how long will you have left of your course?”
“Perhaps a year, perhaps two. Depends upon how soon I go up. It isn’t as if I had to go in for a profession or anything of that kind. I shall spend my life looking after the property, and there’s no particular need to swot for that.”
“I hate loafers,” said Darsie in her turn, then once more relented and said genially, “But I don’t believe you mean half that you say. Anyway, I shall look forward to meeting you at Cambridge, and I hope you are prepared to be kind, and to be ready to return the good offices which I have been able to render to your respected family.”