Overhead the rooks were holding their sage, sustained conference, and I, I believe, nodding gravely and judicially, when an undefined sense of intruding mortals caused me to blink through my lashes. Mrs. Loring and Millicent were slowly crossing the lawn in my direction, their white gowns dipping from orange to grey and grey to orange as they traversed the belts of light. Mrs. Loring was talking; this, be it said, was Mrs. Loring’s supreme opportunity.
I had no wish to listen; it was forced on my passive ears.
“I suppose,” she was saying, “now that Caroline’s gone, he must. I know that Cicely Vicars told me you can do what you like with a man who feels a little bit sorry for himself, Millicent. She did.”
This seemed somehow to concern me. I had doubtless felt somewhat low, but had no idea I had showed it so plainly as that. Anyway, Cicely Vicars doubtless knew. Millicent replied:
“I don’t think it’s fair, Mollie, to talk like that. Rollo Butterfield isn’t a fool; and I daresay Charlie Vicars isn’t such a fool as he was—then.”
Thank you, dear lady.
“He isn’t a fool,” Mrs. Loring replied; “but I do call it criminal—simply criminal—that a man who is getting older and—fatter—every week should keep putting off and putting off for no reason at all except that he’s ashamed to give in after so long. It’s rank breach of promise. I know Rollo Butterfield.”
These were hard words to hear of one’s self. Apparently Mrs. Loring’s one desire was that that presence of mine—fat, hang her impudence!—should hold decently together through a marriage service, and run to seedy corpulence immediately afterwards for all she cared. But Millicent vindicated me nobly.
“If Rollo Butterfield, Mollie, was prepared to marry me to keep me in countenance with all the people we know, I’d never let him propose to me—which he hasn’t done, by the way. But you don’t understand him a little bit. He’s not much fatter, my dear, saving your presence, than Loring; and, any way, he’ll be a young man when Loring’s—you understand me. And you can’t say very much more to me on the subject, Mollie.”
“You’ll have to propose to him yourself, then, Millie,” said Mrs. Loring, with a worldly shrug.