Free Thank Heaven Fasting by E. M. Delafield

one.
    â€œYou’re a little goose, Monica,” she said kindly. “I had the freshness of youth, of course, as a girl, but I don’t suppose otherwise I’ve altered so very much. And prettiness isn’t really very important, darling. A great many very pretty girls never get a chance of marrying at all, and some quite plain ones turn out attractive to men. One never can tell. Father always said that he first fell in love with me because he thought I was natural, and unaffected, and didn’t think about myself all the time. No really nice man ever cares about a girl who’s affected, or self-conscious.”
    Monica hoped ardently that she was neither of these things.
    Claude Ashe, at all events, did not think so. She was sure that he liked her very much. Perhaps, even, he was falling in love with her. If he was, would he say so—and when?
    The season was nearly over, and Monica and her parents were to pay two country-house visits, spend a month in Scotland, and after that, said Mrs. Ingram, Monica could go to the Marlowes—Lady Marlowe was taking a furnished house near Oxford for the whole of September—whilst her parents went to join a large house-party where Royalty was to be met.
    â€œI wish you’d been asked too, my pet,” said Mrs. Ingram, “but naturally people don’t want young girls about. It limits conversation, and everything. When you’re married, it’ll be quite different.”
    Girlhood was indeed, Monica felt, an inferior state from which escape was desirable at any cost.
    What a pity that one couldn’t accept Claude Ashe, evenif he did propose! Probably, however, he never would, for no really nice and honourable man proposed to a girl unless he was in a position to offer her a home at least as comfortable as the one from which he was taking her.
    A week before she was to leave London, Monica was invited by Lady Margaret Miller to dine, and go with a large party of young people—chaperoned by Lady Margaret’s married daughter—to the White City.
    â€œYes, of course you may go,” said Mrs. Ingram. “I certainly shouldn’t allow you to go to dinner-parties without me in the ordinary way, but an old friend like Lady Margaret is different. It’s very kind of her indeed. Write a nice little note and accept, Monica. You’d better let me see it.”
    Monica did not like her mother’s spasmodic supervision of her correspondence, but there was no escaping from it. As though, she thought, she did not know all the rules about letter-writing, that had been impressed upon her ever since she could write at all!
    â€œNever begin a letter with ’I’——”
    â€œPut
‘My
dear So-and-so’ to a person older or more important than yourself.”
    â€œAlways read through a letter before closing it, and if anything has been left out, rewrite the letter—don’t add it in.”
    â€œNever put a P.S. It’s vulgar.”
    Avoiding these and other pitfalls, Monica wrote her acceptance to Lady Margaret.
    Next evening, a telephone message came from her kind hostess. A young man had failed, for the White City party—was there anybody whom Monica would specially like asked, whom Lady Margaret could invite in place of the defaulter?
    The Ingrams were finishing dinner when Mrs. Ingram was called to the telephone, and Monica could hear, from the little room next door, her own name and her mother’s proper expressions of gratitude and assurances that it really was
mucb
too kind.
    Presently Mrs. Ingram returned and explained.
    â€œOh, really, that’s
too
good of her,” said Vernon Ingram. “I never heard of anything so kind. Monica, do you understand that Lady Margaret is good enough to be suggesting that you should submit to her the name of some young man whom you’d like her to invite to her house?”
    Monica felt embarrassed by her father’s excessive sense