Brackenbury made some foolish rejoinder about Phyllida's head being screwed on tight or her heart being in the right place. (In that family they express themselves so uncouthly. Goodness me, one need not be a blue-stocking to realize that English has a certain dignity.) She was only doing what every other girl did, he said... I'm as democratic as any one, but I wondered what our father would have said to the doctrine that his daughter might do a thing simply because everybody else was doing it...
You know this Colonel Butler, perhaps? (It's only brevet-rank; if he stays on in the army, he reverts to full lieutenant only.) I'll confess at once that I liked him. When he was convalescent, Phyllida brought him to luncheon one day in Mount Street, and I thought him a decent, manly young fellow. I understand he comes from the west of England; and that, perhaps, accounts for the accent which I thought I detected; or, of course, he may simply have been not altogether at ease. (When I commented on it afterwards to Phyllida, she insisted that he was very badly shaken by his wound and the three operations... I think that was the first time I suspected anything; she championed him so very warmly.) I liked him—frankly. Some one quite early in the war said something about "temporary officers" and "temporary gentlemen"—it was very naughty, but so true!—; I said to my boy Will, when Colonel Butler was gone:
"If they were all like him, the army might be proud of them."
"All I've met are like him," said Phyllida, "only of course not so much so."
I was struggling to find a meaning—Phyllida expresses herself almost as carelessly as her poor mother, but with hardly her mother's excuse—, when she began to pour out a catalogue of his virtues: he had won a Military Cross and a Distinguished Service Order with a bar, he was the youngest colonel in the army, I don't know what else.
"Who are his people?," I asked.
A name like Butler is so very misleading; it may be all right—or it may not.
"I really don't know," said Phyllida, "and, what's more, I don't care..."
She was prattling away, but I thought it time to make one or two enquiries. I remember saying to poor Ruth—I forget in what connection; life is one long succession of these needless, irritating little encounters—I remember saying that Phyllida was in the position of a girl with no mother. It's not that Ruth and Brackenbury aren't fond of her, but they take no trouble... I asked what our young paragon's regiment was, and you'll hardly believe me if I tell you that it was one I had never heard of. Will knew, of course, but then, on the staff, these things are brought to your notice...
"And what is he in civil life?," I asked.