Mrs. Stratton’s visit was disturbing. I had been looking forward to two years of Rose’s company before the time arrived when she was twenty and would probably want to be independent, and I thought I was entitled to it. These two years were to be very precious—a kind of reward, if you like, for my foster-parental solicitude; and now they were threatened.
It was not public opinion that I was fearing, but the self-conscious restrictions that were being forced on me to the ruin of easy natural familiarity. I should always now be wondering if this or that excursion were wise, or what constructions the beastly world would be putting on this or that occurrence. Nothing could be simple and unselfconscious any more!
I took the problem to Mrs. O’Gorman.
“But you don’t mean to say that this comes as a surprise to you?” she asked, when I had finished the story.
“Yes, it did,” I said.
“O the poor innocent!” she exclaimed. “And for a doctor too! And haven’t I been telling you about it, for years, here in this very room where we’re sitting?”
“Well,” I said, “I hadn’t thought. I was thinking of Rose as a schoolgirl still, not a woman.”
“All girls are women,” said Mrs. O’Gorman. “That’s the difference between girls and boys. Boys go on being boys long after they’re men; girls can be women from birth. Let’s be practical now. What are the alternatives, do you say—Rose to visit about, or a duenna to be imported?”
“There seems to be no other,” I said.
Mrs. O’Gorman laughed her triumphant knowing Irish laugh. “There is at least one more,” she said. “Supposing Rose should become engaged—then no one would have anything to say. Many girls are married and mothers when they’re no older than she is now.” She paused.