“Poor Daffy,” Molly said to Eddy when they were sitting out. “She’s frightfully cross with Nevill for being anti-suffragist, and telling her she’s silly to militate. And he’s cross with her. She told him, I believe, that she wasn’t going to be friends with him any more till he changed. And he never does change about anything, and she doesn’t either, so there they are. It’s such a pity, because they’re really so awfully fond of each other. Nevill’s miserable. Look at him.”
Eddy looked, and saw Nevill, morose and graceful in flannels, smashing double faults into the net.
“He always does that when he’s out of temper,” Molly explained.
“Why does he care so much?” Eddy asked, with brotherly curiosity. “Do you mean he’s really fond of Daffy? Fonder, I mean, than the rest of you are?”
“Quite differently.” Molly became motherly and wise. “Haven’t you seen it? It’s been coming on for quite a year. I believe, Eddy, they’d be engaged by now if it wasn’t for this.”
“Oh, would they?” Eddy was interested. “But would they be such donkeys as to let this get in the way, if they want to be engaged? I thought Daffy had more sense.”
Molly shook her head. “They think each other so wrong, you see, and they’ve got cross about it.... Well, I don’t know. I suppose they’re right, if they really do feel it’s a question of right and wrong. You can’t go on being friends with a person, let alone get engaged to them, if you feel they’re behaving frightfully wrongly. You see, Daffy thinks it immoral of Nevill to be on the anti side in Parliament, and to approve of what she calls organised bullying, and he thinks it immoral of her to be a militant. I think Daffy’s wrong, of course, but I can quite see that she couldn’t get engaged to Nevill feeling as she does.”
“Why,” Eddy pondered, “can’t they each see the other’s point of view,—the good in it, not the bad? It’s so absurd to quarrel about the respective merits of different principles, when all are so excellent.”
“They’re not,” said Molly, rather sharply. “That’s so like you, Eddy, and it’s nonsense. What else should one quarrel about? What I think is absurd is to quarrel about personal things, like some people do.”
“It’s absurd to quarrel at all,” said Eddy, and there they left it, and went to play tennis.