GEORGE. It's very kind of her. Daisy leads a dreadfully lonely life. It would mean so much to her if she knew one or two white women. If they take to one another, you won't try to crab it, will you? I fancy Daisy wants a friend rather badly.
KNOX. I shouldn't like it very much, you know. Would you much care for your sister to be very pally with a half-caste?
GEORGE. Daisy is one in a thousand. You can't think what she's done for me during my illness. My mother couldn't have taken more care of me.
KNOX. They're often very good-hearted. But as a matter of fact nothing I can say will have the least effect on Sylvia. Girls have changed a lot since the war. If she wants to do a thing and she thinks it right, she'll do it. And if I try to interfere she's quite capable of telling me to go to the devil.
GEORGE. She seems to be a young woman of some character.
KNOX. Perhaps because she's had rather a rough time. The fellow she was engaged to was killed in the war and she was awfully cut up. She drove an ambulance for the last two years and then she went up to Girton. After that my father thought she'd better come out here for a bit.
KNOX. If she doesn't put up people's backs too much. She can't stand anything like injustice or cruelty. If she thinks people are unkind to Daisy or sniffy about her, she'll stick to her like a leech. However, I daresay she'll get married.
KNOX. Why don't you marry her? It's about time you settled down.
KNOX. Why? You're by way of being rather eligible, aren't you?
GEORGE. I don't know why you want to get rid of her. She seems a very nice sister.
KNOX. Of course I love having her with me, but she does cramp my style a bit. And she ought to marry. She'd make you a first-rate wife.
GEORGE. Much too good for the likes of me.
KNOX. Of course she's a bit independent, but one has to put up with that in girls nowadays. And she's as good as gold.
GEORGE. One can see that at a mile, my son.
KNOX. I say, who was Rathbone, Daisy's first husband, do you know?
GEORGE. [_His face a blank._] Harry told me he was an American. He said he was in business in the F. M. S.
KNOX. That's what Harry told me. I met a fellow the other day who lives in Singapore who told me he'd never heard of Rathbone.