As they came in and went out together the family from Birmingham glared at them.
"Did you see how they glared?"
"Do you mind?" he said.
"Not a bit."
"No more do I. It doesn't matter what people like that do. Their souls are horrible. They leave a glairy trail everywhere they go. If they were dead--stretched out on their death beds--you'd see their souls, like long, fat white slugs stretched out too, glued to their bodies.... You know what they think? They think we met each other on purpose. They think we're engaged."
"I don't care," she said. "It doesn't matter what they think."
They laughed at the silliness of the family from Birmingham. He had been there five days.
* * * * *
"I--, sa-ay--"
Gwinnie's voice drawled in slow meditative surprise.
The brooding curiosity had gone out of her face. Gwinnie's face, soft and schoolgirlish between the fawn gold bands and plaited ear bosses of her hair, the pink, pushed out mouth, the little routing nose, the thick grey eyes, suddenly turned on you, staring.
Gwinnie had climbed up on to the bed to hear about it. She sat hunched up with her arms round her knees rocking herself on the end of her spine; and though she stared she still rocked. She was happy and excited because of her holiday.
"It can't make any difference, Gwin. I'm the same Charlotte. Don't tell me you didn't know I was like that."
"Of course I knew it. I know a jolly lot more than you think, kid."
"I'm not a kid--if you are two years older."
"Why--you're not twenty-four yet.... It's the silliness of it beats me. Going off like that, with the first silly cuckoo that turns up."
"He wasn't the first that turned up, I mean. He was the third that counted. There was poor Binky, the man I was engaged to. And Dicky Raikes; he wanted me to go to Mexico with him. Just for a lark, and I wouldn't. And George Corfield. He wanted me to marry him. And I wouldn't."
"Why didn't you?"
"Because Dicky's always funny when you want to be serious and George is always serious when you want to be funny. Besides, he's so good. His goodness would have been too much for me altogether. Fancy beginning with George."
"This seems to have been a pretty rotten beginning, anyway."
"The beginning was all right. It's the end that's rotten. The really awful thing was Effie."