“If you will have a woman for a friend, Ethel, you must put up with womanly ways; and it is best to keep your mouth shut concerning such ways. I hate to see you whimpering and whining about wrongs you have been cordially inviting for weeks and months and years.”
“Grandmother!”
“Yes, you have been sowing thorns for yourself, and then you go unshod over them. I mean that Dora has this fine clergyman, and Fred Mostyn, and her brother, and mother, and father all on her side; all of them sure that Dora can do no wrong, all of them sure that Ethel, poor girl, must be mistaken, or prudish, or jealous, or envious.”
“Oh, grandmother, you are too cruel.”
“Why didn’t you have a few friends on your own side?”
“Father and Ruth never liked Dora. And Fred—I told you how Fred acted as soon as he saw her!”
“There was Royal Wheelock, James Clifton, or that handsome Dick Potter. Why didn’t you ask them to join you at your lunches and dances? You ought to have pillared your own side. A girl without her beaux is always on the wrong side if the girl with beaux is against her.”
“It was the great time of Dora’s life. I wished her to have all the glory of it.”
“All her own share—that was right. All of your share, also—that was as wrong as it could be.”
“Clifton is yachting, Royal and I had a little misunderstanding, and Dick Potter is too effusive.”