“We shall keep you as long as you can stay,” said the Reverend Arthur, smiling. “But seriously, did you not exaggerate about those young ladies?”
“Not in the least, my dear boy, as far as regards one of them. The other—old Stuart’s little lassie—seems to be all that is pretty and demure. But I don’t suppose there is any harm in Helen Perowne. She is a very handsome girl of about twenty or one-and-twenty, and I suppose she has been kept shut up there by the old ladies, and probably, with the best intentions, treated like a child.”
“That must be rather a mistake,” murmured the Reverend Arthur, dreamily.
“A mistake, sir, decidedly. If you have sons or daughters never forget that they grow up to maturity; and if you wish to keep them caged up, let it be in a cage whose bars are composed of good training, confidence and belief in the principles you have sought to instil.”
“Yes, I quite agree with you, Harry.”
“Why, my dear boy, what can be more absurd than to take a handsome young girl and tell her that men are a kind of wild beast that must never be looked at, much more spoken to—suppressing all the young aspirations of her heart?”
“I suppose it would be wrong, Harry.”
“Wrong and absurd, sir. There is the vigorous young growth that will have play, and you tighten it up in a pair of moral stays, so to speak, with the result that the growth pushes forth in an abnormal way to the detriment of the subject; and in the future you have a moral distortion instead of a healthy young plant. Ha—ha!—ha—ha!”
“Why do you laugh?” said the Reverend Arthur. “I think what you have said quite right, only that ladies like the Misses Twettenham are, as it were, forced to a very rigid course.”
“Yes, yes, exactly. I was laughing because it seems so absurd for a pair of old fogies of bachelors like us to be laying down the law as to the management and training of young girls. But look here, Arthur, old fellow, as I am in for this job of guardian to these girls, I should like to have something intermediate.”