"How delightful of you."
This girl could fence.
"I'm two and a half times your age," said June, "but I quite sympathize.
It's horrid not to have one's own way."
The girl smiled again. "I really think you might tell me."
How the child stuck to her point
"It's not my secret. But I'll see what I can do, because I think both
you and Jon ought to be told. And now I'll say good-bye."
"Won't you wait and see Father?"
June shook her head. "How can I get over to the other side?"
"I'll row you across."
"Look!" said June impulsively, "next time you're in London, come and see
me. This is where I live. I generally have young people in the evening.
But I shouldn't tell your father that you're coming."
The girl nodded.
Watching her scull the skiff across, June thought: 'She's awfully pretty
and well made. I never thought Soames would have a daughter as pretty as
this. She and Jon would make a lovely couple.
The instinct to couple, starved within herself, was always at work in
June. She stood watching Fleur row back; the girl took her hand off a
scull to wave farewell, and June walked languidly on between the meadows
and the river, with an ache in her heart. Youth to youth, like the
dragon-flies chasing each other, and love like the sun warming them
through and through. Her youth! So long ago--when Phil and she--And
since? Nothing--no one had been quite what she had wanted. And so she
had missed it all. But what a coil was round those two young things,
if they really were in love, as Holly would have it--as her father,
and Irene, and Soames himself seemed to dread. What a coil, and what a
barrier! And the itch for the future, the contempt, as it were, for what
was overpast, which forms the active principle, moved in the heart of
one who ever believed that what one wanted was more important than what
other people did not want. From the bank, awhile, in the warm summer
stillness, she watched the water-lily plants and willow leaves, the
fishes rising; sniffed the scent of grass and meadow-sweet, wondering
how she could force everybody to be happy. Jon and Fleur! Two little
lame ducks--charming callow yellow little ducks! A great pity! Surely
something could be done! One must not take such situations lying down.
She walked on, and reached a station, hot and cross.
That evening, faithful to the impulse toward direct action, which made
many people avoid her, she said to her father:
"Dad, I've been down to see young Fleur. I think she's very attractive.
It's no good hiding our heads under our wings, is it?"