"How do you do?" said June, turning round. "I'm a cousin of your
father's."
"Oh, yes; I saw you in that confectioner's."
"With my young stepbrother. Is your father in?"
"He will be directly. He's only gone for a little walk."
June slightly narrowed her blue eyes, and lifted her decided chin.
"Your name's Fleur, isn't it? I've heard of you from Holly. What do you
think of Jon?"
The girl lifted the roses in her hand, looked at them, and answered
calmly:
"He's quite a nice boy."
"Not a bit like Holly or me, is he?"
"Not a bit."
'She's cool,' thought June.
And suddenly the girl said: "I wish you'd tell me why our families don't
get on?"
Confronted with the question she had advised her father to answer, June
was silent; whether because this girl was trying to get something out
of her, or simply because what one would do theoretically is not always
what one will do when it comes to the point.
"You know," said the girl, "the surest way to make people find out the
worst is to keep them ignorant. My father's told me it was a quarrel
about property. But I don't believe it; we've both got heaps. They
wouldn't have been so bourgeois as all that."
June flushed. The word applied to her grandfather and father offended
her.
"My grandfather," she said, "was very generous, and my father is, too;
neither of them was in the least bourgeois."
"Well, what was it then?" repeated the girl: Conscious that this young
Forsyte meant having what she wanted, June at once determined to prevent
her, and to get something for herself instead.
"Why do you want to know?"
The girl smelled at her roses. "I only want to know because they won't
tell me."
"Well, it was about property, but there's more than one kind."
"That makes it worse. Now I really must know."
June's small and resolute face quivered. She was wearing a round cap,
and her hair had fluffed out under it. She looked quite young at that
moment, rejuvenated by encounter.
"You know," she said, "I saw you drop your handkerchief. Is there
anything between you and Jon? Because, if so, you'd better drop that
too."
The girl grew paler, but she smiled.
"If there were, that isn't the way to make me."
At the gallantry of that reply, June held out her hand.
"I like you; but I don't like your father; I never have. We may as well
be frank."
"Did you come down to tell him that?"
June laughed. "No; I came down to see you."