“But too much work would be infinitely better than too much play,” said Cicely. “Life to me would be utterly insupportable without plenty of things one must do.”
“I hate must,” said Trevor.
“I love it,” said Cicely.
“We are like Jack Sprat and his wife,” observed Trevor, laughing.
Cicely grew crimson. “I wish you would not turn everything into ridicule, Trevor,” she said, with an impatience very unlike her usual manner.
As she spoke she became aware that Mr. Guildford was observing her with a curious mixture of expressions in his face. Something in what she saw helped her to recover her composure.
“Don’t you agree with me, Mr. Guildford?” she said. “You must know something of hard work—don’t you prefer it to having nothing to do but to amuse yourself?”
“I can hardly say I have ever known what it is to feel free to amuse myself. I have had to work hard all my life, but I have not got tired of it yet,” the young man replied simply. “But the truth of it is that too much play becomes very hard work, I suspect.”
“It depends on the person,” said Trevor. “You, for instance, Cicely, set to work even at croquet with such earnestness and consideration that it is quite fatiguing to watch you, and Miss Casalis, on the other hand, flutters over her most laborious duties as if—as if—”
“As if she were a butterfly, and I a drone,” said Cicely lightly. She felt touched by Trevor’s good humour, and conscious that she had hardly deserved it. Geneviève looked up and laughed, for the first time since the beginning of the little conversation.