I know they are in the arbor, for there is Mrs. Velrose standing squarely in the middle of the coach road staring in that direction.
When I asked Miss Velrose the other day who was in love with her now, she looked at me quizzically and asked: “Do you mean, who is abusing me now?” I presume that is the only abuse Miss Velrose ever has had to suffer,—that of young men who have tried to scold her into being less obdurate. Women are not likely to reward abuse unless it is accompanied by tremendous persistency. In spite of time and change, persistency remains the greatest of all factors in courtship. Courting is like advertising—you must keep it up.
Mrs. Velrose has taken the butterfly net from the Winkinson midget and is chasing a papilio ajax—in the direction of the arbor. Mrs. Velrose is late.
It has been droll to see Mrs. Velrose guarding, with maternal persistency, her tall, white, sparkling daughter. No human partridge has ever more energetically fluttered to detract attention from the presence of her young. Mrs. Velrose is a prodigious talker. A mother who is a prodigious talker occupies a very important place in a girl’s fortunes.
Yes, Mrs. Velrose is too late. Rollington and his companion have emerged from the bower into the path that skirts the pine grove. Probably they are going down to that wooded point by the lake shore. There is a rustic seat there.... Yes, that is where they are going.
Beyond doubt, the sweet inanities of courtship would be less sweet if not threatened with observation and interruption. The side glances of the world, the caution of parents, the inhibitions of society all play their parts.
Mrs. Velrose has abandoned the papilio ajax. She is coming back.
A daughter is a great responsibility. But so also is a mother. It is wrong to suppose that children feel no sense of responsibility for their progenitors. That larger education which so many women receive vicariously when their daughters go to college is one enforcing nice discrimination upon the educator as well as upon the educated. The American does not object to being governed. He only asks to select the machinery and the engineer. The American’s daughter expounds him. If every husband contrives to let his wife know how he likes to be managed, every daughter may find ways of making the yoke of her daughterhood exceeding light. In the debated matter of authority the American mother gives that she may receive. I don’t suppose there ever was a more perfect partnership, taken at its best, than the partnership of an American mother and her daughter, until marriage, which dissolves all other partnerships, brings its great readjustments....