“You don’t think we have judged her too harshly, Philip?”
“Do you, mother?”
“No, I think we couldn’t be too severe in a thing like that. She probably thought you were like some of the other story-writers; she couldn’t feel differences, shades. She pretended to be taken with the circumstances of your work, but she had to do that if she wanted to fool you. Well, she has got her come-uppings, as she would probably say.”
Verrian replied, thoughtfully, “She didn’t strike me as a country person—at least, in her first letter.”
“Then you still think she didn’t write both?”
“If she did, she was trying her hand in a personality she had invented.”
“Girls are very strange,” his mother sighed. “They like excitement, adventure. It’s very dull in those little places. I shouldn’t wish you to think any harm of the poor thing.”
“Poor thing? Why this magnanimous compassion, mother?”
“Oh, nothing. But I know how I was myself when I was a girl. I used almost to die of hunger for something to happen. Can you remember just what you said in your letter?”
Verrian laughed. “NO, I can’t. But I don’t believe I said half enough. You’re nervous, mother.”