“Honetht?”
“Honest.”
“That’s tough.” The cherub pondered, her round eyes searching Jill’s face. “Why don’t you get married?”
Jill laughed.
“Nobody’s asked me.”
“Somebody thoon will. At least, if he’s on the level, and I think he is. You can generally tell by the look of a guy, and, if you ask me, friend Pilkington’s got the license in hith pocket and the ring all ordered and everything.”
“Pilkington!” cried Jill, aghast.
She remembered certain occasions during rehearsals, when, while the chorus idled in the body of the theatre and listened to the principals working at their scenes, the elongated Pilkington had suddenly appeared in the next seat and conversed sheepishly in a low voice. Could this be love? If so, it was a terrible nuisance. Jill had had her experience in London of enamoured young men who, running true to national form, declined to know when they were beaten, and she had not enjoyed the process of cooling their ardor. She had a kind heart, and it distressed her to give pain. It also got on her nerves to be dogged by stricken males who tried to catch her eye in order that she might observe their broken condition. She recalled one house-party in Wales where it rained all the time and she had been cooped up with a victim who kept popping out from obscure corners and beginning all his pleas with the words “I say, you know … !” She trusted that Otis Pilkington was not proposing to conduct a wooing on those lines. Yet he had certainly developed a sinister habit of popping out at the theatre. On several occasions he had startled her by appearing at her side as if he had come up out of a trap.
“Oh, no!” cried Jill.
“Oh, yeth!” insisted the cherub, waving imperiously to an approaching street-car. “Well, I must be getting uptown. I’ve got a date. Thee you later.”