"That's nonsense," said Lucia. "All we Severences get stout as we grow old. You can't hope to escape."
"Grow old!" Margaret's brow lowered. Then she smiled satirically. "Yes, I AM growing old. I don't dare think how many seasons out, and not married, or even engaged. If we were rich, I'd be a young girl still. As it is, I'm getting on.'"
"Don't you worry about that, Rita," said Lucia. "Don't you let them hurry you into anything desperate. I'm sure _I_ don't want to come out. I hate society and I don't care about men. It's much pleasanter lounging about the house and reading. No dressing—no fussing with clothes and people you hate."
"It isn't fair to you, Lucy," said Margaret. "I don't mind their nagging, but I do mind standing in your way. And they'll keep you back as long as I'm still on the market."
"But I want to be kept back." Lucia spoke almost energetically, half lifting her form whose efflorescence had a certain charm because it was the over-luxuriance of healthy youth. "I shan't marry till I find the right man. I'm a fatalist. I believe there's a man for me somewhere, and that he'll find me, though I was hid—was hid—even here." And she gazed romantically round at the enclosing walls of foliage.
The resolute lines, the "unfeminine" expression disappeared from her sister's face. She laughed softly and tenderly. "What a dear you are!" she cried.
"You can scoff all you please," retorted Lucia, stoutly. "I believe it. We'll see if I'm not right.... How lovely you did look last night!... You wait for your 'right man.' Don't let them hurry you. The most dreadful things happen as the result of girls' hurrying, and then meeting him when it's too late."
"Not to women who have the right sort of pride." Margaret drew herself up, and once more her far-away but decided resemblance to Grandmother Bowker showed itself. "I'd never be weak enough to fall in love unless I wished."
"That's not weakness; it's strength," declared Lucia, out of the fulness of experience gleaned from a hundred novels or more.
Margaret shook her head uncompromisingly. "It'd be weakness for me." She dropped upon the bench beside her sister. "I'm going to marry, and I'm going to superintend your future myself. I'm not going to let them kill all the fine feeling in you, as they've killed it in me."