"I think I shouldn't be so glad to go if—if you—weren't going too. And I shouldn't like to be you, to have listened on the sly. It was mean."
Roy sat motionless. That view of the matter had not yet occurred to him. He dismissed Molly's first words as unimportant, being merely a girl's unreasonable view of things, with which he as a boy could not be expected to agree. But that he—Roy Baron, son of a Colonel in His Majesty's Guards—should be accused of "meanness!" The word stung sharply. Roy always pictured his own future in connection with a scarlet coat, a three-cornered cocked hat, a beautiful pigtail, and the stiffest of military stocks to hold up his chin. He knew something of a soldier's sense of honour, and even now he felt ready to fight his country's battles. And that he should be accused of meanness—and by a girl!
"I do think so," Molly added. "It was horridly mean. Prying into what you weren't meant to hear! And then coming and telling me! If I had done such a thing, you'd have been the first to call it mean."
Roy stood bolt upright.
"You needn't have said it to me like that!" he said. "You might have told me, Molly—different, somehow. But I wouldn't be mean for anything, and I'm going to tell papa, straight off."
Roy did not ask Molly to go with him, and she was keenly sensible of the omission. He marched off alone, carrying his head as high as if the military stock had already encircled his throat. When he went into the drawing-room there was a pause in the conversation; and this seemed to show that Molly was in the right. She might be cross, but perhaps she had judged correctly.
"Run away, Roy," the Colonel said. "We did not send for you, and we are busy."
"Please, sir, may I say something first?" Roy advanced unfalteringly, and stood in front of the Colonel.
"Well, be quick, my boy. You are interrupting us."
Roy's honest grey eyes met his father's. "I was out there," he said, pointing to the verandah. "And I heard something. I didn't think about its being a secret, and I listened. I heard about going to Paris, and I—I went and told Molly. And she said it was mean of me. And I—couldn't be mean, sir!"