“Young indeed! How is one ever to be of any use if mothers and people are always fussing about one’s being young?”
“One won’t always be so—”
“They would think so, like the woman of a hundred years old, who said on her daughter’s death at eighty, ‘Ah, poor girl, I knew I never should rear her!’ How shall I get to see the Infirmary here?”
“Miss Mohun would take you.”
“Can’t I go without a fidgety old maid after me?”
“I’ll tell you what I wish you would do, Emmie. Write an account of one of your hospital visits, or of the match-girls, for the Mouse-trap. Do! You know Gerald has written something for it.”
“He! Why he has too much sense to write for your voluntary schools. Or it would be too clever and incisive for you. Ah! I see it was so by your face! What did he send you? Have you got it still?”
“We have really a parody of his which is going in—The Girton Girl. Now, Emmie, won’t you? You have told me such funny things about your match-girls.”
“I do not mean to let them be turned into ridicule by your prim, decorous swells. Why, I unfortunately told Fernan Brown one story—about their mocking old Miss Bruce with putting on imitation spectacles—and it has served him for a cheval de bataille ever since! Oh, my dear Anna, he gets more hateful than ever. I wish you would come back and divert his attention.”
“Thank you.”