“Quite a salutary feeling for a young lady,” nodded her father. “Especially for one who has always had an excellent opinion of herself.”
“Oh, papa!” protested Bess. “I’m not conceited!”
“No, not that precisely,” agreed her father; "but most girls, when they get to be about eighteen, and have all the boys making sheep’s-eyes at them, begin to think that this world was made especially for them, and that nobody else has any right in it, except perhaps to hustle around and provide them with ribbons and chiffon ruffles. It’s good for them to get a hint, now and then, that the world is really something more than a pedestal for them to stand on."
Bess sighed, a little dismally.
“I never understood before,” she said, “how awfully I’ve been wasting my time.”
“If you never waste any more, my dear, you’ll have nothing to regret. Most women don’t wake up to the fact that they’re wasting their time until they’re middle-aged, and by that time they’ve fallen into such a habit of doing so that they can’t change.”
“I believe,” added Bess, thoughtfully, “that I’ll ask Allan to the party I’m going to give next week.”
“Do, by all means,” said her father, heartily. “It will do you good, and it won’t hurt him.”
So it came to pass, a few days later, that the postman mounted the steps to the little Welsh cottage and left there a tiny envelope addressed to “Mr. Allan West.” Mary received it, and turned it over and over.
“It’s from a girl,” was her comment. “Bad cess to her. But I knowed th’ girls couldn’t let sich a foine-lookin’ lad as that alone. They’ll be makin’ eyes at him, an’ pertendin’ t’ edge away, an’ all th’ toime invitin’ him on—don’t I know ’em!” And Mary grew quite warm with indignation, entirely forgetting that she herself had been a girl once upon a time, and an adept in all the arts of that pretty game of advance and retreat which she now denounced so vigorously.