Prudence considered this.
“Possibly I want too much—I think I do,” she said after a while. “And so do you. We are the children of our age, Bobby; we’ve learnt to think for ourselves; when one begins to think one ceases to accept things unquestioningly. I’m alive to my finger tips. I want to enjoy. I am not satisfied merely to exist; a worm does that. I want to experience life to the full. Don’t you?”
“I suppose I do,” Bobby agreed—“when you put it that way.”
Prudence was triumphant.
“There you are, you see. It’s just the way a thing is put. For the moment you almost convinced me that the discontent lay in myself, and now I convince you that there is substantial ground for discontent. No one should remain quiet under dissatisfying conditions; we should each strive for individual liberty. Youth is the time in which to do things, and youth passes quickly. When we are old we cease to strive because the spirit of adventure leaves us; but the hunger for the things which we have missed remains. And that makes us bitter.”
“How do you know?” demanded Bobby, with a cynical smile for her youth.
“Know!” she repeated, and faced him, her eyes alight and scornful. “One has only to look around and note the disappointed, dull, sour people one meets; people who have had their chance and missed it, because they reasoned as you do; people who have not possessed courage or initiative, but in whose blood the desire for enjoyment has worked as surely as it works in ours. Do you suppose Agatha has never wanted to marry and manage a man and a home of her own? Do you suppose Matilda doesn’t hunger for children, and Mary for a lover? Didn’t daddy desire love? He married twice, and the second time at least was not merely a matter of expediency. I’m colder perhaps, harder anyway. I don’t want anything but just to get away from Wortheton and live my own life independently, and order my days as I please.”
Bobby stared at her open-mouthed, bereft in his astonishment of the power of speech. Prudence suddenly laughed.
“You old thing!” she cried. “I’ve properly scandalised you. Why do you set my thoughts working along these lines? You are just a boy.”
“Oh, shut it!” he ejaculated. “You aren’t much older.”