“No, because you don’t want to see it. Probably you don’t know that Elizabeth is fast becoming a humbug. She hasn’t got a mind of her own; she echoes her aunt. She pretends to like things her aunt thinks she ought to like, she can’t develop because her aunt won’t let her. She isn’t even allowed to read what she likes.”

“You can’t seriously be advocating an unrestricted library for Elizabeth!” said Lawrence, very sarcastically.

“No,” Mr. Hengist had paused, and considered, frowning. “No. But surely it’s easy enough to keep the books she isn’t old enough to read out of her way? There are jolly few, anyway.”

“My dear Hengist, some of these moderns—!”

“She wouldn’t understand ’em. Better let her read modern realism than morbid sentimentality. For God’s sake teach her to face facts!”

Lawrence thought that it was time to put a stop to the discussion. Hengist was talking nonsense, of course, but it was rather disturbing.

“As I said before,” he smiled, “we all know that you bachelors have eccentric notions on the upbringing of children. I think we can trust Anne to look after Elizabeth,”

Chapter Two

Elizabeth at sixteen made a great discovery, that Men were fascinating, much more so than girls. Hitherto she had known no Men, only Father and Mr. Hengist, and people like the doctor and the dentist and shop-assistants. Somehow they did not seem to be Men, at least, not with a capital M. They were creatures who wore trousers; there was nothing exciting about them.

But Marjorie Drew’s brother Tony was something entirely new and thrilling. He was twenty-two and had just come down from Cambridge. He thought Elizabeth was pretty, like a wild-rose. Marjorie laughed, and said, no, a prim-rose, and Tony was quite angry with her. He said Elizabeth was a little shy violet, or perhaps a snowdrop, until Marjorie grew tired of hearing horticultural similes, and left him.

Until he met Elizabeth Tony had rather thought that he was passionately in love with an attractive lady of thirty-three, living at Bedford, but now he began to think that he had mistaken his heart. The lady, one Mrs. Lambert, treated him as a boy and made him run errands for her; Elizabeth looked shyly up at him and was all admiration. It was rather refreshing, but of course Elizabeth was only a kid.

So Elizabeth, who had never known a school-girl’s passion for one of her own sex, plunged into her first love-affair, and hugged it to her, and sighed, despaired, rejoiced and fluttered.