Jill was conscious of a little flicker of irritation.
“Don’t be absurd, Freddie. How could a man like Derek be under anybody’s thumb?”
“Well, you know what I mean!”
“I don’t in the least know what you mean.”
“I mean, it would be rather rotten if his mother set him against you.”
Jill clenched her teeth. The quick temper which always lurked so very little beneath the surface of her cheerfulness was stirred. She felt suddenly chilled and miserable. She tried to tell herself that Freddie was just an amiable blunderer who spoke without sense or reason, but it was no use. She could not rid herself of a feeling of foreboding and discomfort. It had been the one jarring note in the sweet melody of her love-story, this apprehension of Derek’s regarding his mother. The Derek she loved was a strong man, with a strong man’s contempt for other people’s criticism; and there had been something ignoble and fussy in his attitude regarding Lady Underhill. She had tried to feel that the flaw in her idol did not exist. And here was Freddie Rooke, a man who admired Derek with all his hero-worshipping nature, pointing it out independently. She was annoyed, and she expended her annoyance, as women will do, upon the innocent bystander.
“Do you remember the time I turned the hose on you, Freddie,” she said, rising from the fender, “years ago, when we were children, when you and that awful Mason boy—what was his name? Wally Mason—teased me?” She looked at the unhappy Freddie with a hostile eye. It was his blundering words that had spoiled everything. “I’ve forgotten what it was all about, but I know that you and Wally infuriated me and I turned the garden hose on you and soaked you both to the skin. Well, all I want to point out is that, if you go on talking nonsense about Derek and his mother and me, I shall ask Parker to bring me a jug of water, and I shall empty it over you! Set him against me! You talk as if love were a thing any third party could come along and turn off with a tap! Do you suppose that, when two people love each other as Derek and I do, that it can possibly matter in the least what anybody else thinks or says, even if it is his mother? I haven’t got a mother, but suppose Uncle Chris came and warned me against Derek —”
Her anger suddenly left her as quickly as it had come. That was always the way with Jill. One moment later she would be raging; the next, something would tickle her sense of humor and restore her instantly to cheerfulness. And the thought of dear, lazy old Uncle Chris taking the trouble to warn anybody against anything except the wrong brand of wine or an inferior make of cigar conjured up a picture before which wrath melted away. She chuckled, and Freddie, who had been wilting on the fender, perked up.
“You’re an extraordinary girl, Jill! One never knows when you’re going to get the wind up.”
“Isn’t it enough to make me get the wind up, as you call it, when you say absurd things like that?”
“I meant well, old girl!”
“That’s the trouble with you. You always do mean well. You go about the world meaning well till people fly to put themselves under police protection. Besides, what on earth could Lady Underhill find to object to in me? I’ve plenty of money, and I’m one of the most charming and attractive of Society belles. You needn’t take my word for that, and I don’t suppose you’ve noticed it, but that’s what Mr Gossip in the Morning Mirror called me when he was writing about my getting engaged to Derek. My maid showed me the clipping. There was quite a long paragraph, with a picture of me that looked like a Zulu chieftainess taken in a coal-cellar during a bad fog. Well, after that, what could anyone say against me? I’m a perfect prize! I expect Lady Underhill screamed with joy when she heard the news and went singing all over her Riviera villa.”