“Deb—is nothing sacred to you?”
“That’s what I was going to ask him. But he proved a fairly unusual type. He speculated a moment, and then shook his head, smiling: ‘Yes—but you shouldn’t have taken the cigarette. That’s an accepted cue, you know—or if you didn’t know, you ought to have.’ It struck me for the very first time that there is something in it when our mothers and aunts warn us not to let unknown young men talk to us.”
“Yes, but they ought to tell us why and they never do,” in one long breath from Nell, whom the other girls had forgotten was present.
“Our aunts and mothers, most of them, have Weldon’s-Paper-Pattern still in their systems, however tolerant and lax they may appear on the surface.”
“Then no wonder we get into messes, scrabbling about for wisdom. Our aunts and mothers weren’t allowed to scrabble by their aunts and mothers.... And our children won’t need to scrabble.”
“Our children,” murmured Jill, and her hand touched Nell’s hair regretfully.... Nell was such a baby still!
“We’re at the transition period—do you remember that sketch I did of you, Deb? And the transition period has to pay, always.”
“Then is there a male of the transition period—to match the girl? or are we transitting alone?”
“Same old male—the one I met in the train. And experiment clashed with habit. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell about.”