He was clever, self-assertive, and already
known as a brilliant debater and as a sound speaker at the Oxford Union.
There need be no trouble as to Jack Tosswill's future--he was going to
the Bar, and there was little doubt that he would succeed there. One of
his idiosyncrasies was his almost contemptuous indifference to women. He
was fond of his sisters in a patronising way, but the average pleasant
girl, of whom the neighbourhood of Beechfield had more than its full
share, left him quite cold.
The next in age--Dolly--was the most commonplace member of the family.
Her character seemed to be set on absolutely conventional lines, and the
whole family, with the exception of her father, who did not concern
himself with such mundane things, secretly hoped that she would marry a
young parson who had lately "made friends with her." As is often the case
with that type of young woman, Dolly was feckless about money, and would
always have appeared badly and unsuitably dressed but for the efforts of
her elder sister and step-mother.
Rosamund, the youngest and by far the prettiest of the three sisters, was
something of a problem. Though two years younger than Dolly, she had
already had three or four love affairs, and when only sixteen, had been
the heroine of a painful scrape--the sort of scrape which the people
closely concerned try determinedly to forget, but which everyone about
them remembers to his or her dying day.
Pages:
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51