“Oh your judgement wouldn’t probably at all determine mine. It’s as bearing on you I ask it.” Which, however, demanded explanation, so that I was duly frank; confessing myself curious as to how far maternal immorality would go.
It made her at first but repeat my words. “Maternal immorality?”
“You desire your son to have every possible distraction on his voyage, and if you can make up your mind in the sense I refer to that will make it all right. He’ll have no responsibility.”
“Heavens, how you analyse!” she cried. “I haven’t in the least your passion for making up my mind.”
“Then if you chance it,” I returned, “you’ll be more immoral still.”
“Your reasoning’s strange,” said Mrs. Nettlepoint; “when it was you who tried to put into my head yesterday that she had asked him to come.”
“Yes, but in good faith.”
“What do you mean, in such a case, by that?”
“Why, as girls of that sort do. Their allowance and measure in such matters,” I expounded, “is much larger than that of young persons who have been, as you say, very well brought up; and yet I’m not sure that on the whole I don’t think them thereby the more innocent. Miss Mavis is engaged, and she’s to be married next week, but it’s an old old story, and there’s no more romance in it than if she were going to be photographed. So her usual life proceeds, and her usual life consists—and that of ces demoiselles in general—in having plenty of gentlemen’s society. Having it I mean without having any harm from it.”
Mrs. Nettlepoint had given me due attention. “Well, if there’s no harm from it what are you talking about and why am I immoral?”