This was Lorimer's vulgar way.

'Don't be an ass,' said Pringle, with a laugh which should have been
careless, but was in reality merely feeble. 'She's quite a kid.'

Miss Mabel Lorimer's exact age was fifteen. She had brown hair, blue
eyes, and a smile which disclosed to view a dimple. There are worse
things than a dimple. Distinctly so, indeed. When ladies of fifteen
possess dimples, mere man becomes but as a piece of damp
blotting-paper. Pringle was seventeen and a half, and consequently too
old to take note of such frivolous attributes; but all the same he had
a sort of vague, sketchy impression that it would be pleasanter to run
up a lively century against the O.B.s with Miss Lorimer as a spectator
than in her absence. He felt pleased that she was coming.

'I say, about this poem,' said Lorimer, dismissing a subject which
manifestly bored him, and returning to one which was of vital interest,
'you're sure you can write fairly decent stuff? It's no good sending in
stuff that'll turn the examiner's hair grey. Can you turn out something
really decent?'

Pringle said nothing. He smiled gently as who should observe, 'I and
Shakespeare.'




[5]