“And did she—could she really love him?” Patsy asked the question of herself rather than the man beside her.
But he answered it promptly: “I don’t believe Marjorie Schuyler has anything to love with; it was overlooked when she was made. That’s what’s worrying me. If he’s got into a scrape he’d tell Marjorie the first thing; and she’s not the understanding, forgiving kind. He hasn’t any money; he wouldn’t go to his father; and because he’s borrowed from me once, he’s that idiotic he wouldn’t do it again. If Marjorie has given him his papers he’s in a jolly blue funk and perfectly capable of going off where he’ll never be heard of again. Hang it all! I don’t see why he couldn’t have come to me?”
Patsy said nothing while he replenished her plate and helped himself to another sandwich. At last she asked, casually, “Did the two of you ever have a disagreement over Marjorie Schuyler?”
“He asked me once just what I thought of her, and I told him. We never discussed her again.”
“No?” Inwardly Patsy was tabulating why Billy Burgeman had not gone to his friend when Marjorie Schuyler failed him. He would hardly have cared to criticize the shortcomings of the girl he loved with the man who had already discovered them.
“What are you two jabbering about?” Janet Payne had left her group and the hectic argument over fashions.
“Sure, we’re threshing out whether it’s the Irish or the suffragettes will rule England when the war is over.”
“Well, which is it?”