“Rosalie, be quiet!” cried Hilda.
Father glared and then went on and on.
It was the beginning of a chain of most startling upheavals. It was also, and the upheavals were also, a new manifestation to Rosalie of the all-importance of men. After supper, in the first place, Flora and Hilda, taking Rosalie very severely to task for her perilous outburst, explained to her that the men they met were not the kind of men that father meant they ought to meet. It was necessary, it was essential, they explained, for every girl to meet men she could marry. That was what every girl had to do. Men—surely you understand that, Rosalie—had all the money and everything and met girls and asked them to marry. Those men sometimes met on walks, you little stupid, were too young and had no money yet. “There, that’s enough,” they explained. “Anyhow, we shan’t be meeting them much more. One of us is probably going to India; you heard what father said, didn’t you?... Well, of course you can’t understand properly. You will when you’re grown up. Surely that’s quite enough for you to understand at present.... How can a woman live if she doesn’t marry, stupid? She must have money to live and it is men who have the money.... Well, of course they do because they earn it; look at Harold; and Robert will have money when he’s a little older.... Well, how can women? Now, I said that’s enough and it is enough.”
It was enough and most satisfactorily enough for one purpose. It was the first explanation of men as a race apart from women that Rosalie had ever received and it precisely bore out all that she had conceived about them. It affirmed her perception of the wonder and greatness of men as compared with women. It intensified that perception.
Wonderful men! Marvellous and most fortunate men!
And then the chain of most startling upheavals began. Father wrote to Uncle Tom in India. Father wrote to Aunt Belle, Mrs. Pyke Pounce, in London. What he wrote was not to be known by Rosalie, outside the rectory wheel. The others knew, for father, with enormous pride at his wonderful epistolatory style in his voice, was heard reading the letter to them. But the others, of course, knew also what Rosalie never realised, the grinding poverty of the rectory. She knew no other life than the herrings, the makeshifts, and the general shabbiness of the rectory. It was not till long afterwards that, looking back, she realised the pinching and the screwing that served—almost—to make ends meet.
So father wrote. India was far, London was near. Aunt Belle’s reply came while the letter to Uncle Tom was still upon the sea. Such a reply! Wonderful father to win such a reply from Aunt Belle! “You see what it is to be able to write a telling and forceful letter!” cried father. Such an exciting reply! Aunt Belle was coming on a visit “to talk it over and see what she could do.”
Aunt Belle came.