"Why do you suppose I've been talking such a lot? Why do you imagine
I snapped your poor, innocent head off just now? I'm terrified
inside, terrified!"

"You don't look it, by Jove!"

"No, I'm trying to be a little warrior. That's what Uncle Chris
always used to call me. It started the day when he took me to have a
tooth out, when I was ten. 'Be a little warrior, Jill!' he kept
saying--'Be a little warrior!' And I was." She looked at the clock.
"But I shan't be if they don't get here soon. The suspense is awful."
She strummed the keys. "Suppose she _doesn't_ like me, Freddie! You
see how you've scared me."

"I didn't say she wouldn't. I only said you'd got to watch out a
bit."

"Something tells me she won't. My nerve is oozing out of me." Jill
shook her head impatiently. "It's all so vulgar! I thought this sort
of thing only happened in the comic papers and in music-hall songs.
Why, it's just like that song somebody used to sing." She laughed.
"Do you remember? I don't know how the verse went, but . . .


John took me round to see his mother,
his mother,
his mother!
And when he'd introduced us to each other,
She sized up everything that I had on.