I know not. Nature says,
Obey; and man obeys.
I see, and know not why
Thorns live and roses die.
W. S. Landor
CXXXVIII
Hazel Barrance to Nesta Rossiter
My Dear Nesta,—I have had a brain-wave. Why should not I go down to Combehurst until you are free again and sleep near the children and let Emily go on attending to them by day, as she suggests, and keep an eye on her? I am willing to. This would also liberate Fred for his Dormy House, whither he could lug his clubs with a clear conscience. If you accept this offer, don’t overwhelm me with gratitude, because I shall be pleasing myself more than anything else, this abode being at the moment a most suitable one to leave.
Father’s sarcasms have had very high velocity of late. He said this morning, for example, apropos of a very harmless young man who brought me back from the theatre and whom I was foolish enough to ask in for a whisky and soda, that if girls looked at men with the eyes of men the world would come to an end, because there would be no marriages. I replied that I supposed the effect would not be far different if men looked at women with the eyes of women; which he would of course have himself included if he was not eager to score off me. Not that this young man had any more designs on me than the rest of his sex. (I don’t count Horace.) Never was a girl so unembarrassed by suitors as I or more willing to be so. But it is part of father’s humour to pretend that I hunt them and that I catch only the most detrimental. How he would behave if I really got engaged I often wonder. Probably he would play the game.