She went ahead of me into the parlor, arranged a heap of pillows at one end of the sofa, saying, “There!” and sat herself in a small, straight chair some distance away.
Going on eighteen is an age between maidenhood and womanhood. Innocence and wisdom have the same naïve guise and change parts so fast that you cannot be sure which one is acting. The girl herself is not sure. She doesn’t stop to think. It is a charming masquerade of two mysterious forces. The part of innocence is to protect and conceal her; the part of wisdom is to betray and reveal her.
“I wish I were a man,” she sighed.
“Every girl says that once. Why do you wish it?” I asked.
“But it’s so,” she said. “They know so much ... they can do so many things.”
“What does a man know that a woman doesn’t?”
“If I were a man,” she said, “I’d be able to help father. I’d understand figures and charts and all those things he works with. They make my silly head ache. I’d study finance. What is it like?”
“What is finance like?”
“Yes. Do you think I might understand it a little?”