“I had hoped,” he said, “that you, as well as Molly, would make friends with Eileen. She needs friendship rather. She’s hurt and broken; you must have seen that yesterday.”
“Indeed, I hardly looked. But I’ve no doubt she would be. I’m sorry for your unfortunate friend, Eddy, but I really can’t know her. You didn’t surely expect me to ask her here, to meet Chrissie and Dulcie and my innocent Jimmy, did you? What will you think of next? Well, well, I’m going to play bridge now, and you can go and talk to Molly. Only don’t try and persuade her to meet your scandalous friends, because I shall not allow her to, and she has no desire to if I did. Molly, I am pleased to say, is a very right-minded and well-conducted girl.”
Eddy discovered that this was so. Molly evinced no desire to meet Eileen Le Moine. She said “Aunt Vyvian doesn’t want me to.”
“But,” Eddy expostulated, “she’s constantly with the rest—Jane and Sally, and Denison, and Billy Raymond, and Cecil Le Moine, and all that set—you can’t help meeting her sometimes.”
“I needn’t meet any of them much, really,” said Molly.
Eddy disagreed. “Of course you need. They’re some of my greatest friends. They’ve got to be your friends too. When we’re married they’ll come and see us constantly, I hope, and we shall go and see them. We shall always be meeting. I awfully want you to get to know them quickly. They’re such good sorts, Molly; you’ll like them all, and they’ll love you.”
There was an odd doubtful look in Molly’s eyes.
“Eddy,” she said after a moment, painfully blushing, “I’m awfully sorry, and it sounds priggish and silly—but I can’t like people when I think they don’t feel rightly about right and wrong. I suppose I’m made like that. I’m sorry.”
“You precious infant.” He smiled at her distressed face. “You’re made as I prefer. But you see, they do feel rightly about things; they really do, Molly.”
“Then,” her shamed, averted eyes seemed to say, “why don’t they act rightly?”