"Ought there to be ... anything to think about?" Thus Sally; and her mother sees, or thinks she sees, a little new colour in the girl's cheeks. Or is it only the sunset? Then Rosalind says to herself that perhaps she has made a mistake, had better have left it alone. Perhaps. But it's done now. She is not one that goes back on her resolutions. It is best not to be too tugging and solemn over it. She speaks with a laugh.
"It's not my little daughter I'm afraid of, Sallykin. She's got the key of the position. It's that dear good boy."
"He's not a boy. He's thirty-one next February. Only he's not got a birthday, because it's not leap-year. Going by birthdays he's not quite half-past seven."
"Then it won't do to go by birthdays. Even at thirty-one, though, some boys are not old enough to know better. He's very inexperienced in some things."
"A babe unborn—only he can write prescriptions. Only they don't do you any good. ("Ungrateful child!"... "Well, they don't.") You see, he hasn't any one to go to to ask about things except me. Of course I can tell him, if you come to that!"
"There's his mother."
"His mother! That old dianthus! Oh, mammy darling, what different sorts of mothers do crop up when you think of it!" And Sally is so moved by this scientific marvel that she suddenly kisses her mother, there out on the public parade with a gentleman in check trousers and an eye-glass coming along!
"Why do you call the old lady a dianthus, chick? Really, the way you treat that poor old body!..."
"Not when Prosy's there. I know my place.... We-ell, you know what a dianthus's figure is like? When the tentacles are in, I mean."