This was almost pure amiability, because she wasn't cold, and she'd been having a pretty good time. Her other (practically negligible) motive was that Penny might be reminded, by her withdrawal, of his forgotten promise to teach her to float—and be sorry. Altogether, George would have been showing only a natural and reasonable sense of his obligations if he'd brightened up and flirted with her a little, instead of glooming out to sea the way he did, paying simply no attention to her at all. So at last she pricked him.
"Isn't it funny," she said, "the really blighting contempt that swimmers feel for people who can't feel at home in the water—people who gasp and shiver and keep their heads dry?"
She could see that, in one way, this remark had done George good. It helped warm him up. Leaning back on her hands, as she did, she could see the red come up the back of his neck and spread into his ears. But it didn't make him conversationally any more exciting. He merely grunted. So she tried again.
"I suppose," she said dreamily, "that the myth about mermaids must be founded in fact. Or is it sirens I'm thinking about? Perfectly fascinating, irresistible women, who lure men farther and farther out, in the hope of a kiss or something, until they get exhausted and drown. I'll really be glad when Penny gets back alive."
"And I shall be very glad," said George, trying hard for a tone of condescending indifference appropriate for use with one who has played dolls with one's little sister, "I shall really be very glad when you make up your mind what you are going to do with Penny. He's just about a total loss down at the office as it is, and he's getting a worse idiot from day to day. And the worst of it is, I imagine you know all the while what you're going to do about it—whether you're going to take him or not."
The girl flushed at that. He was being almost too outrageously rude, even for George. But before she said anything to that effect, she thought of something better.
"I shall never marry any man," she said very intensely, "whose heart is not with the Cause. You know what Cause I mean, George—the Suffrage Cause. When I see thoughtless girls handing over their whole lives to men who..."
It sounded like the beginning of an oration.
"Good Lord!" her victim cried. "Isn't there anything else than that to talk about—ever?"
"But just think how lucky you are, George," she said, "that at home they all think exactly as you do!"