their old tennis party a bit early. Why should she stay if she was bored? Jolly decent of her to go at all, I think.”
“Quite a favour,” I said, but Dennis suspected no malice. He was full of his own grievances on Lettice’s behalf.
“She’s awfully unselfish really. Just to show you, she made me stay. Naturally I wanted to go too. But she wouldn’t hear of it. Said it was too bad on the Napiers. So just to please her, I stopped on a quarter of an hour.”
The young have very curious views on unselfishness.
“And now I hear Susan Hartley Napier is going about everywhere saying Lettice has rotten manners.”
“If I were you,” I said, “I shouldn’t worry.”
“It’s all very well, but—”
He broke off.
“I’d—I’d do anything for Lettice.”
“Very few of us can do anything for anyone else,” I said. “However much we wish it, we are powerless.”
“I wish I were dead,” said Dennis.
Poor lad. Calf love is a virulent disease. I forebore to say any of the obvious and probably irritating things which come so easily to one’s lips. Instead, I said goodnight, and went up to bed.
I took the eight o’clock service the following morning and when I returned found Griselda sitting at the breakfast table with an open note in her hand. It was from Anne Protheroe.