“I think you are,” said John.
“I 've just remembered I put the groundsel—” began Miss Lindon, coming into the room. Then she stopped, petrified at the unusual spectacle.
John laughed rather foolishly, and Unity, flushing scarlet, rushed out.
“I was only asking her whether we were treating her nicely,” said John, rising and stretching his loose limbs.
“What a question to ask the child!”
“Well, she answered it like that, you see,” said John.
“But what a way to answer a simple question! She forgets sometimes that she is a young lady of eighteen, an age when manners ought to be formed. But manners,” she continued, hunting about the room, “are not what they were when I was young. I declare, I sometimes see young women in the streets with woollen caps and hockey-sticks—”
John took a salad-bowl from the mantelpiece. “Is that Dickie's groundsel?”
“Oh, how clever of you! Where did you find it? Dickie has been so angry. He's just like a man when his dinner's late. I don't mean you. You 're a perfect saint, dear.”
“Which reminds me,” said John, with a laugh, “that I've mislaid my halo and I must go and find it.”