SHELTERED PEOPLE
thought him possible. I think it’s the feeling of the potter for his clay. Something might be made of him. He seems so helpless somehow. Men of his sort always are. I’d like to mother him. Besides”—and she flashed around on her hostess brightly—“he does sit a horse like a centaur.”
“He’s also an excellent shot, a good chauffeur, a tolerable dancer and the best bat in England, all agreeable talents in a gentleman of fashion but—er—hardly” Lady Betty burst into laughter. “Good Lord, Doris! Cyril a firebrand!”
Doris Mather eyed her hostess reproachfully and moved toward the door into the hallway.
“Come, Betty,” she said with some dignity, “are you ready to go down?”
All of which goes to show that matches are not made in Heaven and that the motives of young women in making important decisions are actuated by the most unimportant details. Hammersley’s good fortune was still a secret except to Miss Mather’s most intimate friends, but the conviction was slowly growing in the mind of the girl that unless Cyril stopped sitting around in tweeds when everybody else was getting into khaki, the engagement would never be announced. As the foreign situation had grown more serious she had seen other men who weighed less than Cyril throw off the boredom of their London habits and go soldiering into France. But the desperate need of his country for able-bodied men had apparently made no impression upon the placid mind of the Honorable Cyril. It was as unruffled as a highland lake in mid-August. He had contributed liberally from his large means to Lady Heathcote’s Ambulance Fund, but his manner had become, if anything, more bored than ever.
9
