Haslam looked at him.
“Well. You’re a caution, you are!”
“I’m a bit of a swine, the same as you,” retorted Frederic.
[VII
YOUNG WOMEN]
| Our own precedent passions do instructusWhat levity is in youth. | ||
| TIMON OF ATHENS. | ||
YOUNG people must for ever be trying to fall in love, and in this ancient sport young women are every bit as active as young men. For the matter of that, the greater part of humanity remain adolescent in this affair, that is, hemmed in by a thick-set hedge of prejudice and unsatisfied emotion and convention and childish theory, so that they are for ever in a state of uneasy curiosity about love, always ready to put salt on its tail, but unable to come within reach of it. For that reason they are always confusing love with being in love, an active state of living which can be permanent with an emotional condition which must be transitory.
Mrs. Folyat had the most beautiful illusions about her household. She was not entirely deceived by them when she came face to face with herself, but in her relations with her husband, her friends and her daughters she always exhibited the most profound faith in them. Though her daughters were grown women she never troubled to discover the state of their minds, but assumed their innocence and purity, and she never referred back to her own state of mind at the same age and the same maiden condition. In short, she burked the difficulty and the responsibility, though she was secretly alarmed at their slowness in finding husbands. She had no notion of their finding any career outside marriage, and took no steps to prepare them even for that.
There was a constant stream of young men passing through the house, and they all seemed to do their best to fall in love with Gertrude and Mary, but they either fell victims to Minna, who played with them and squeezed their young hearts dry between her finger and thumb, or they disappeared and were caught in the toils elsewhere. There were so many young women and so few eligible young men. They flirted, they danced, they paid visits to the theatres, and Gertrude sang and Mary played her violin, but nothing happened. It was very annoying. The Clibran-Bell girls did not marry either, but there was no comfort in that. They had such large noses; and they were not Folyats. They had not the charm of high gentility. . . . Neither Gertrude nor Mary was pretty, but they could be amusing and they seemed to attract attention. Minna was decidedly pretty, with a wide delightful grin and a mocking humour. The most serious and solemn young men were devoted to her. They were always proposing to her, but she always refused them or became engaged to them for about a week. Her betrothals hardly ever seemed to survive the visit to their families. She invariably seemed to see them in caricature, and had amassed quite a large collection of mental pictures of North-country families who received her at high tea and welcomed her with shy effusiveness.
Mrs. Folyat was fonder of Minna than of her other daughters. She was easier to get on with and much less expensive. Mary and Gertrude had acquired the habit of visiting relations in the South much richer than themselves, and every year they demanded an exorbitant outlay on clothes, and they came back rather scornful of life in Fern Square and rather rebellious at having to resume their household duties or work in the church and Sunday-school. Also, for a time, they would assume a lofty tone with the young men of their acquaintance, and they used to prick at Frederic and tell him he was becoming provincial. Minna used to lash them with her tongue, dealing out the wickedest malice with the most urbane good-humour, and deliberately annex any young men whom they brought to the house. She called Gertrude “Mother Bub” and Mary “Mottle-tooth.” From their superiority in years they affected to ignore her, but they lost no opportunity of annoying her and upsetting her plans for her own comfort and enjoyment.