"That's where you're mistaken," said I. "Half everything gets
known--the unimportant half. The rest is supplied by malicious or
prejudiced invention."
We discussed the question after the futile way of men until we
went into the drawing-room, where Betty played and sang to us
until it was time to go home.
Marigold was about to lift me into the two-seater when Betty, who
had been lurking in her car a little way off, ran forward.
"Would it bore you if I came in for a quarter of an hour?"
"Bore me, my dear?" said I. "Of course not."
So a short while afterwards we were comfortably established in my
library.
"You rang me up to-day about Phyllis Gedge."
"I did," said I.
She lit a cigarette and seated herself on the fender-stool. She
has an unconscious knack of getting into easy, loose-limbed
attitudes. I said admiringly:
"Do you know you're a remarkably well-favoured young person?"
And as soon as I said it, I realised what a tremendous factor
Betty was in my circumscribed life. What could I do without her
sweet intimacy? If Willie Connor's Territorial regiment, like so
many others, had been ordered out to India, and she had gone with
him, how blank would be the days and weeks and months! I thanked
God for granting me her graciousness.
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