"I wonder if I like you well enough," said Helena coolly, biting at a stalk of grass--"well enough, I mean, to explain things. I haven't made you my father confessor yet, Geoffrey." "Suppose you begin--and see how it answers," said French lazily, rolling over on the grass in front of her, his chin in his hands. "Well, I don't mind--for fun. Only if you preach I shall stop. But, first of all, let's get some common ground. You admit, I suppose, that the war has changed the whole position of women?" "Yes--with reservations." "Don't state them!" said Helena hastily. "That would be preaching. Yes, or No?" "Yes, then,--you tyrant!" "And that means--doesn't it--at the very least--that girls of my own age have done with all the old stupid chaperonage business--at least nearly all--that we are to choose our own friends, and make our own arrangements?--doesn't it?" she repeated peremptorily. "I don't know. My information is--that the mothers are stiffening." A laughing face looked up at her from the grass. "Stiffening!" The tone was contemptuous. "Well, that may be so--for babes of seventeen--like that one--" her gesture indicated a slight figure in white at the edge of the lawn--"who have never been out of the school-room--but--" "You think nineteen makes all the difference? I doubt," said Geoffrey French coolly, as he sat up tailor-fashion, and surveyed her. "Well, my view is that for the babes, as you call them, chaperonage is certainly reviving. I have just been sitting next Lady Maud, this babe's mother, and she told me an invitation came for the babe from some great house last week, addressed to 'Miss Luton and partner'--whereon Lady Maud wrote back--'My daughter has no partner and I shall be very happy to bring her.' Rather a poke in the eye! Then there are the women of five or six and twenty who have been through the war, and are not likely to give up the freedom of it--ever again. That's all right. They'll take their own risks. Many of them will prefer not to live at home again. They'll live with a friend--and visit their people perhaps every day! But, then there's _you_, Helena--the betwixt and between!--" "Well--what about me?" "You're neither a babe--nor a veteran." "I'm nineteen and a half--and I've done a year and a half of war work--" "Canteen--and driving? All right. Am I to give an opinion?" "You will give it, whatever I say. And it's you all over--to give it, before you've allowed me to explain anything." "Oh, I know your point of view--" said Geoffrey, unperturbed--"know it by heart. Haven't you dinned it into me at half a dozen dances lately? No!--I'm entitled to my say--and here it is. Claim all the freedom you like--but as you're _not_ twenty-five, but nineteen--let a good fellow like Buntingford give you advice--and be thankful!" "Prig!" said Helena, pelting him with a spray of wild cherry, which he caught and put in his button-hole. "If that isn't preaching, I should like to know what is!"