E. Nesbit

“ The only person he seems to really like (is that bad grammar? can’t remember) is Claud, the boy that is my cousin. When I first met Claud he told me he should tell me about the girl he was in love with. But he never has. But he is awfully nice. It is just like I think it must be having a brother. And he introduces people to me, and they ask me out, and we do have splendid times. I am going next week to a real dinner-party in Gray’s Inn. The man has been an art student, and a medical student, and a philosophy student, and everything you can think of, so that he knows all the different sets. ”

“ Bernard Shaw.”
“Oh, it was clever,” said Daphne, “much cleverer than anything I ever saw. But—”
“But?”
“People don’t run after people like that in real life. It’s simply caricature!”
“Don’t they?” said he. “You think all that about the life-force is nonsense?”
“I don’t know,” she said; “anyway, even if it isn’t, people don’t behave like that.”
“I wonder,” said he. “Well. I wonder. You think it’s always the men who do the running?”
“Isn’t it?” said she.
“Yes,” he said, “in books.”
Suddenly, for no reason that she could have given, she wished her stairs clear of him.
“Good night,” she said. ”

“ Everyone loves Doris. She has a heavenly time. She’s always going out to tea. She has lessons with me and I try to make them interesting. Everyone loves her. Even that man kissed her hand and called her princess. Doris is going to tea with the gazelle-lady and Claud is coming to tea with me. It’s quite usual here. Lots of the things people don’t do in books or that people are awfully shocked at if they do, are quite the proper thing in London. ”

“ He caught her by the elbows to steady them both in the shock of impact, and as he let her go, to the tune of an apology and the flourish of a raised hat, she saw that it was Henry. This sounds unlikely, but it was so. And that was the only time that it ever was Henry, though Daphne ran up against people in the street quite as often as any of us.
“Hullo—the district nurse!” he said. It was true that she had bound up a cut finger at the sketch club, but how should he know that? “I hope I haven’t hurt you, Miss Carmichael. My lame foot makes me clumsy. Let me post your letter for you.” ”

“ I don’t know how it is, people seem to confide in me. I suppose they have an instinct for the people who would not betray their confidence. It’s three weeks today since I eloped with my Dormouse. And I am beginning to feel quite safe. At first I used to live in terror of being found by Aunt Emily and dragged back by the hair to Laburnum Villa. My hair is redder than ever. And that just shows what nonsense people talk. ”

“ And now she would write to Cousin Jane. Doris would still be at tea with the gazelle lady. She found cool quiet in the room where the cisterns babbled of fountains, mountain streams, and ideal landscapes, and wrote:
“My dear Cousin Jane: I feel in my heart that you cannot, do not, blame me for what I did. I could not see Doris suffer. You were kind to her. You know what it is to love someone, and you understand. We have no more money now. Will you send me Uncle Hamley’s address? ”

“ And there is something extraordinarily exasperating in not being able to see a door which every now and then opens and shuts. When the rests came she looked to see who had come in. It was never Henry. And the lot of the amateur model grows harder with every moment. She was very tired.
And then, at the very end, when she had got away from the sketch-club, had reached her own house and had got nearly up the stairs, there was Aunt Jane’s letter to post. ”

“ He is older than the others, and they all think a lot of his work – I can’t think why – and look up to him, and are proud if he condescends to come to their studios. I shouldn’t allow him to come to mine if I had one, even if he wanted to most frightfully. He is very rude almost always, though he can be nice enough if he likes. ”

“ It makes such a difference the way people say things, don’t you think? I think he ought to have a lesson. All the girls admire him frightfully, and he’s not really good looking at all, only very black hair with a hooked nose and a white face and eyes like smoked topazes—or do I mean cairngorms? ”

“ But it doesn’t matter if you’re not beautiful so long as people like you, does it?”
“I do wonder why I haven’t been caught. The detectives at Scotland Yard can’t be as clever as in books. And as for Sherlock Holmes, he would have found me out in a day and three-quarters. A day and a half for jaw about his methods, and a quarter of a day for finding me. Sometimes I think that man is really a detective in disguise. He has such an odd way of looking at you. But the aunts haven’t found me, and I am still, and I hope forever,
“Your free and happy⁠ ”