He “went for her” according to his own methods, not above criticism. The “Ars Amatoria” of Ovid is hardly out of date, but that lively treatise was not to be found in the Court library. Wilverley’s notion of courting would have been termed by his sister—self-expression. The honest fellow wanted Cicely to see him in all his moods and tenses before conjugation. He talked unweariedly about Arthur Wilverley. Beware of branding him too hastily as egoist or prig! He happened to be neither. Like his sister, the welfare of others lay next his heart. At the same time it seemed to be an imperative duty to reveal himself to his future wife.

Cicely was rather impressed at first.

And it is not unreasonable to affirm that he might have got her au premier coup had Grimshaw remained in Poplar. Comparisons between Grimshaw and Wilverley became inevitable. Cicely was not unversed in such mental exercises. At school young ladies of the ripe age of fifteen were invited to compare, in parallel columns, Napoleon with Wellington, Gladstone with Disraeli, Thackeray with Dickens. The prize-winning contributions were published in the school magazine, typed and edited by the overworked Miss Minchin.

Cicely wrote as follows to her dearest Tiddy:

“I do wish you were here, because I’m dying to talk to you about Arthur Wilverley. I’m sure you will think him rather a dear. Anyway, he’s been ever so nice to me. No chocs! He’s not that sort. Plenty of good, sensible talk, which is flattering, isn’t it? I sometimes think that he’s practising on me, trying on sentences which he means to use in public. He’s our star landlord in these parts, and makes poor Mother gasp when he tells her what she ought to do at Upworthy. Of course, he’s frightfully rich. Have I mentioned Mr. Grimshaw to you?” (O Cicely——!) “He’s Dr. Pawley’s new partner, and very clever. But this cleverness doesn’t stick out of him, thank goodness! Arthur and he took a fancy to each other when they first met, because they have a lot in common—better rural conditions, and all that. I told both of them that it was no use hustling and bustling Mother. Mr. Grimshaw bottles himself up; Arthur uncorks himself. Already I seem to know everything he has done and is going to do. I’m afraid that you will say he’s not wildly exciting. Nothing subtle about him. He strikes me as being immensely ‘safe.’ One couldn’t imagine him letting anybody down, or letting himself down. Mr. Grimshaw is better-looking. He might come to grief if things went very wrong with him. Or he might climb to giddy heights.

“Mother is pinching a bit—no cream! She says it’s fattening. Most of our neighbours are pinching for patriotic reasons, but some of them like it. This hateful war shows us all up. Mrs. Roden (Arthur’s sister) is a scream! You will love pulling her leg. It’s rather against Arthur that he can’t see how funny she is——”

A postscript was added:

“Mr. Grimshaw has dark, disconcerting eyes. I’m afraid he’s very poor.”

To this artless epistle Miss Tiddle replied by return of post.

“I wish I were at Wilverley,” she wrote, “because your letter is a dead give-away. You’re working up a ‘pash’ for this young man with the disconcerting eyes!!! And I’ll bet my string of pearls against a boot-lace that he’s a better chap than your Arthur, who doesn’t appeal to me at all. I see by the peerage that he’s nearly forty, and probably getting bald. Why does he talk to you? Why not write to me as a pal should? Before you get this, he may have proposed, without a word of warning from me. And likely as not you’ll blush and say ‘yes,’ because, obviously, the whole thing has been a put-up job. My tip is: flirt sweetly with both of them, and don’t commit yourself! I have three affairs on—no end of a rag! If necessary, I’ll have a go at your Arthur. Try him out! I expect he’s too fat, mentally and physically, for my taste. But I’d sacrifice myself for you. I shall look forward to meeting Mr. Grimshaw. If he’s poor and clever, he’ll reach up and help himself to the needful, with you dangling at the end of the pole as a prize.

“My lady-mother is pinching too. We no longer dine the people we don’t like. But we shall freeze on to our footmen till public opinion wrenches them from us....”

This letter constrained Cicely to collate her virginal thoughts with Miss Tiddle’s vulgar words. Vulgar, be it noted, is used as “vernacular.” Shakespeare might have described Miss Tiddle’s prose as “naked as the vulgar air.” Lady Selina might have used the adjective in its commoner acceptation. It would have shocked her inexpressibly had she been told that her child was “working up a pash” for anybody, even if he were a young duke with all the gifts of the gods. Cicely, however, knew her “Tiddy,” and took no offence. But ... was she thinking too much of this man with the disconcerting eyes? Did he stand, square to the four winds of heaven, between herself and Arthur? She asked herself the question when she was engaged in preparing a pailful of disinfectant. One would prefer to envisage the nymph in a fragrant rose-garden, plucking the dewy blossoms, inhaling with them the sweet freshness of morning.... Cicely had just finished scrubbing the floor of the dispensary; the pungent odour of carbolic assailed her pretty nose. And it served well enough, better perhaps than any rose, to kill the parasitic sentimental growths which so often clog and obscure a maiden’s true understanding of herself.

What was Grimshaw to her?

Being still a child in many ways, she applied the nursery test. If she were in a boat with the two men, and the boat upset, and it were possible for her to save one of the two, which one would be saved?

Her lively imagination, unduly stimulated by Tiddy’s prose, beheld the two appealing faces mutely beseeching her for life and love. She hesitated. The heads sank, to bob up again. She positively shivered with indecision. Then she laughed. The prescient Tiddy had hit the mark. Arthur was ... well, not thin. He suggested floating. If he turned on his broad back and stopped struggling, he would float. But Grimshaw would sink ...!

The test sufficed. Cicely filled her pail, and carried it demurely into a ward.