Silence. A twig fell from a tree, and the two started.
“I said,” said Grant, looking up at a patch of sky through the branches while Joy plucked a blade of grass into tiny bits; “I said—I was getting afraid I’d never meet her.”
A throbbing stillness in the woods; then Joy spoke breathlessly. “So—was I,” she said.
A blue-jay shrieked discordantly from near by, and with a hitch, they resumed more general subjects. Somehow, when one talks about ideals, one always gets personal.
“Girls nowadays don’t encourage men to look up to them,” said Grant. “There isn’t the respect there used to be—and the girls don’t seem to miss it.”
“Some girls miss it,” said Joy; “but what can they do about it? If they object, and try to bring back past conditions, they are labelled old-fashioned, slow, stiff,—and let alone. Respect and what men consider a good time can no longer be combined.”
“That’s the girls’ side, I suppose. But a man’s position is hard, too. No man wants to fall in love with a girl who is unattractive to other men. Probably you would call that sheep-like, but it’s something we can’t help. And the popular girls nowadays, the girls that men run after, are spoiled by that very quality that makes them popular. Betty says I’m awfully stuffy—but most of them seem to me hard—flippant—and—well, unreserved. Do you see what I mean?”
“Yes,” said Joy, amazed at his putting into words the half-formed thoughts that had been sifting through her brain ever since she had begun to observe boys and girls together, which had been at an early age, as with most small-town girls.
“It seems,” Grant went on, “it seems almost as if girls were trying to break down every difference that exists between them and men—smoking and drinking are only two examples——”
She winced. Vaguely conscious of her unrest, he turned to her with an impulsive gesture. “The only reason I’m saying all this is because it’s so wonderful to find a girl like you nowadays——”