Dr. Bull was quite ready for her. “You is the second person plural—or used to be when I went to school. You, and Mary, and Edward, you’re his friends, aren’t you?—and two of you are women, so he’ll have to be polite, hey? Can’t bite your heads off the way he bit off mine, when I suggested that a holiday ’ud do him good. And he wants a holiday, hey?”
Elizabeth nodded.
“He ought to go away,” she said.
“He’ll break down if he doesn’t,” said Dr. Bull. He finished his cup of tea, and held it out. “Yes, another, please. You make him go, and he’ll come back a new man. What’s the good of being a woman if you can’t manage a man for his good?”
Elizabeth thought the matter over for an hour, and then she spoke to Edward.
“He won’t go,” said Edward, with a good deal of irritation. “I asked him some little time ago whether he wasn’t going to take a holiday. Now what is there in that to put any one’s back up? And yet, I do assure you, he looked at me as if I had insulted him. Really, Elizabeth, I can’t make out what has happened to David. He never used to be like this. And he comes here too often, a great deal too often. I shall have to tell him so, and then there’ll be a row, and I simply hate rows. But really, a man in his state, always under one’s feet—it gets on one’s nerves.”
“Edward is getting dreadfully put out,” said Mary the same evening. She had come down to Elizabeth’s room to borrow a book, and lingered for a moment or two, standing by the fire and holding one foot to the blaze. It was a night of sudden frost after the mild spring day.
“How cold it has turned,” said Mary. “Yes, I really don’t know what to do. If Edward goes on being tiresome and jealous”—she bridled a little as she spoke—“if he goes on—well, David will just have to stay away, and I’m afraid he will feel it. I am afraid it may be bad for him. You know I have always hoped that I was being of some use to David—I have always wanted to have an influence—a good influence does make such a difference, doesn’t it? I’ve never flirted with David—I really haven’t—you know that, Liz?”
“No,” said Elizabeth slowly. “You haven’t flirted with him, Molly, my dear, but I think you are in rather a difficult position for being a good influence. You see, David is in love with you, and I think it would be better for him if he didn’t see you quite so often.”
Mary’s colour rose.