Charms -- Fiction; Great Britain -- Social life and customs -- 20th century -- Fiction; Love stories; World War, 1914-1918 -- Fiction
"I guess she wouldn't have said that without some reason for liking him.
Jack thinks he's fine," young Awdas's sweetheart concluded her plea for
the absent. "Don't you like him, Olwen?"
There was a silence as the two girls walked up Tottenham Court Road,
comparatively empty at this time of the evening.
Then Olwen drew a quick little breath, turned up her face to her
friend's, and let out an emphatic "I did like him." Then in a soft hurry
of words, "I liked him all that time in France. Yes. Awfully! I thought
of him and thought of him, Golden. It seemed to make everything ...
beautiful to me." Then a little ashamed laugh, "I was----silly, then!"
"Silly?" repeated her friend gently. "That's not the way it seems to
me. That's a lovely thing in a girl's life." She lifted her chin over
the leopard-skin stole and looked ahead to the stars above the murky
lamps, to the skies in which lay her own lover's pathless way. "Make
everything beautiful; that's what love should do. I _know_," said
Golden, shyly, but proudly. "I didn't know for certain, until Jack
showed me. I'm so pleased you know too...."
"Oh, but--that's not new," Olwen protested quickly. "That's over."
"Over? Then--if you don't mind telling me, what do you feel about
Captain Ross now? What does he mean in your life?"
Little Olwen had asked herself this very same question until she'd given
it up, and now she scarcely knew whether to laugh or to shrug her
shoulders.
"I'll tell you," she said lightly, after a moment, "exactly how I feel
about Captain Ross. I would have told you before, if you'd asked me. To
start with, I work all day at the Honeycomb, where there are hundreds of
other girls, and men. Some of these people amuse me, and some don't,
so----"
"But----'_amuse_'----" repeated Golden, blankly. "Does that stand for
anything big?"
The soft Welsh voice of the other girl retorted, "It does, when you are
working, and--and there isn't anything else. Isn't it natural that one
likes the amusing people best? Mrs. Newton is amusing. Major Leefe
doesn't mean to be, but he is. Mr. Ellerton is nice to go about
with----"
Again Golden broke in gently. "Olwen! I don't like to hear you talk that
way."
"Why not? Les Pins is over. And when a thing's over," pronounced this
sage of twenty, "sensible people don't waste any more time on it."
"When you say that, it seems to me to be belittling a very----" Golden
made the characteristic American pause after the adverb--"beautiful
thing."
"It's different for you who have one man meaning the whole world to you.
As I haven't. Well, I want to be amused, Golden."
More gently still Golden repeated, "I don't like to hear you talk that
way, Olwen. Don't you feel any more that Captain Ross is different from
the others?"
"I feel he's less amusing," declared the girl, walking beside her.
"And how," asked Golden, "does that young Mr. Ellerton 'amuse' you,
then?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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