Now your friend down ahead there--Miss Madden--she doesn't
take much stock in notice-boards. In fact, she feeds
the gulls, simply because she's forbidden to do it.
But you--you don't feed any gulls, and yet you're annoyed
with yourself that you don't. Isn't that the case? Haven't
I read you right?"
She seemed to have submitted to his choice of a topic.
There was no touch of expostulation in the voice with
which she answered him. "I see what you think you mean,"
she said.
"Think!" he responded, with self-confident emphasis.
"I'm not 'thinking.' I'm reading an open book. As I say,
you're not contented--you're not happy; you don't try
to pretend that you are. But all the same, though you
hate it, you accept it. You think that you really must
obey your notice-boards. Now what I tell you you ought
to do is to take a different view. Why should you put up
all this barbed wire between yourself and your friends? It
doesn't do anybody else any good--and it does you harm.
Why, for example, should Plowden be free to take things
from me, and you not?"
She glanced at him, with a cold half-smile in her eye.
"Unfortunately I was not asked to join your Board."
He pressed his lips tightly together, and regarded her
meditatively as he turned these words over in his mind.
"What I'm doing for Plowden," he said with slow vagueness
meanwhile, "it isn't so much because he's on the Board.
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