And a mental picture rose before Gwenna of the guardian she had left in the valley. She saw his shock of white, bog-cotton hair, his face of a Jesuit priest and his voice of a Welsh dissenting minister. She heard that much-resented voice declaiming slowly. "Yes, Yes. I know the meaning of London and self-respect and earning one's own living. I know all about these College girls and these girls going to business and working same as the men, 'shoulder to shoulder'—Indeed, it's very likely! 'Something better to do, nowadays, than sit at home frowsting over drawn-thread work until a husband chooses to appear'—All the same thing! All the same thing! As it was in the beginning! 'A wider field'—for making eyes! And only two eyes to make them with. Oh, forget-ful Providence, not to let a modern girl have four! 'Larger opportunities'—more chance of finding a young man! Yes, yes. That's it, Gwenna!"
Gwenna, at the mere memory of it, broke out indignantly, "Sometimes I should like to stab old people!"
"Meaning the celebrated Uncle Hugh? Too wise, isn't he?" laughed Leslie lightly, with her hands at her hair. "Too full of home-truths about the business girl's typewriter, and the art-student's palette and the shilling thermometer of the hospital nurse, eh? He knows that they're the modern girl's equivalent of the silken rope-ladder—what, what? And the chaise to Gretna Green! This Way Out. This Way—to Romance. Why not? Allow me, Madam——"
Here she took up an oval box of eighteenth-century enamel, picked out a tiny black velvet patch and placed it to the left of a careless red mouth.
"Effective, I think?"
"Yes; and how can you say there's such a thing as 'obsolete' in the middle of all this?" protested Gwenna. "Look, how the old fashions come up again!"
"Child, curb your dialect. 'Look,'" Leslie mimicked the Welsh girl's rising accent. "'The old fashshons.' Of course we modify the fashions now to suit ourselves. My old lady had to follow them just as they were. We," said this twentieth-century sage, "are just the same as she was in lots of ways. The all-important thing to us is still what she calls the Mate!"
"M'm,—I don't believe it would be to me," said Gwenna simply. And thinking of the other possibilities of Life—fresh experiences, work, friendship, adventure (flying, say!)—she meant what she said. That was the truth.
Side by side with this, not contradicting but emphasising it, was another truth.
For, as in a house one may arrange roses in a drawing-room and reck nothing of the homely business of the kitchen—then presently descend and forget, in the smell of baking bread, the flowers behind those other doors, so divided, so uncommunicating, so pigeon-holed are the compartments, lived in one at a time, of a young maid's mind.