Mrs. Roden had been right in assuming Cicely to be neither immaculately innocent nor ignorant of what she termed “essential facts.” She and Arabella had discussed marriage and even motherhood quite naturally, but not often, being mainly engrossed with tennis and hockey and, subsidiary to these, their work in class. Arabella insisted that they must be near the head of the procession and maintain an honourable position without undue “mugging.” A good report, indeed, at the close of her school career had transmuted thousands of pills into the pearls which Lady Selina so admired.

Arabella, it will be remembered, had this strangle-hold over Cicely. Lady Tiddle had graduated in life at a shoe factory. Arabella acknowledged, with pardonable pride, that her second cousin on the maternal side was a housemaid. Cicely was friendly with housemaids at the Manor, but, in strict obedience to Lady Selina, never familiar with them. Arabella pronounced this abstention to be a loss, not a gain. She had talked very freely with the second cousin.

“They have an enormous bulge over us, Cis. You see, they get to know men. Our information is second-hand. Lily”—that happened to be the name of the second cousin—“has had a dozen boys on and off. She began when she was fifteen. She’s as straight as they make ’em, you know, but dead nuts on spooning.”

Cicely winced at this, although curiosity pricked her. Conscious that she needn’t ask for details, because Arabella always supplied them, she held her tongue. Arabella continued:

“Lily can make comparisons, weigh Tom against Dick, scrap both, and take on Bill. I call that true liberty. I don’t see why an intelligent girl, anxious to get the right sort of hubby, as, of course, we all are, shouldn’t be engaged half a dozen times.”

“Tiddy——!”

“That’s my idea. Probably Father, who is becoming rather rankly conservative since he was knighted, will put the kibosh on that, but how, I ask, can you know what a man is really like till he has kissed you?”

“What perfectly awful things you say!”

“All right! I’m a red poppy, and proud of it. You’re the wee crimson-tippit daisy. Be a daisy if you like. I’ll call you—Dais.”

“Tiddy, please don’t! I’ll try not to be a daisy. You do give one ideas. But kissing——! That is housemaidy, if you like.” She frowned and then quoted triumphantly: “‘Her lips are common as the stairs.’ Ugh!”

Arabella laughed. Perhaps she wanted to shock a too aristocratic friend.

“Oh, well, Lily thinks no more of that than you do of brushing your teeth.”

“I should have to brush my teeth, Tiddy, if any man dared to kiss me.”

Such talks, infrequent as they might be, stimulated imagination. Lady Selina may have wondered why Miss Tiddle was chosen by Cicely as her particular “chum.” Surely there were—others? But the others lacked personality. Arabella imposed herself. Her liveliness, her audacity, her humour—were irresistible.

Cicely’s first action on becoming a V.A.D. was to write to Miss Tiddle, entreating her to join the staff at Wilverley. Sir Nathaniel Tiddle, after a heartening glance at the peerage and “Who’s Who,” raised no objection. Finally it was arranged that Arabella should “weigh in” with the New Year.

Meanwhile, Cicely was seeing Arthur Wilverley every day.