"I'm not a kid--if you _are_ two years older."

"Why--you're not twenty-four yet.... It's the silliness of it beats me.
Going off like that, with the first silly cuckoo that turns up."

"He wasn't the first that turned up, I mean. He was the third that
counted. There was poor Binky, the man I was engaged to. And Dicky
Raikes; he wanted me to go to Mexico with him. Just for a lark, and I
wouldn't. And George Corfield. _He_ wanted me to marry him. And I
wouldn't."

"Why didn't you?"

"Because Dicky's always funny when you want to be serious and George is
always serious when you want to be funny. Besides, he's so good. His
goodness would have been too much for me altogether. Fancy _beginning_
with George."

"This seems to have been a pretty rotten beginning, anyway."

"The beginning was all right. It's the end that's rotten. The really
awful thing was Effie."

"Look here--" Gwinnie left off rocking and swung herself to the edge of
the bed. Her face looked suddenly mature and full of wisdom. "I don't
believe in that Effie business. You want to think you stopped it because
of Effie; but you didn't. You've got to see it straight.... It was his
lying and funking that finished you. He fixed on the two things you
can't stand."