“Well,” said I, “at any rate, in America young girls have an easier lot. They have much more liberty.”
My companion laid her hand for an instant on my arm. “My dear young friend, I know America, I know the conditions of life there, so well. There is perhaps no subject on which I have reflected more than on our national idiosyncrasies.”
“I am afraid you don’t approve of them,” said I, a little brutally.
Brutal indeed my proposition was, and Mrs. Church was not prepared to assent to it in this rough shape. She dropped her eyes on her book, with an air of acute meditation. Then, raising them, “We are very crude,” she softly observed—“we are very crude.” Lest even this delicately-uttered statement should seem to savour of the vice that she deprecated, she went on to explain. “There are two classes of minds, you know—those that hold back, and those that push forward. My daughter and I are not pushers; we move with little steps. We like the old, trodden paths; we like the old, old world.”
“Ah,” said I, “you know what you like; there is a great virtue in that.”
“Yes, we like Europe; we prefer it. We like the opportunities of Europe; we like the rest. There is so much in that, you know. The world seems to me to be hurrying, pressing forward so fiercely, without knowing where it is going. ‘Whither?’ I often ask, in my little quiet way. But I have yet to learn that any one can tell me.”
“You’re a great conservative,” I observed, while I wondered whether I myself could answer this inquiry.
Mrs. Church gave me a smile which was equivalent to a confession. “I wish to retain a little—just a little. Surely, we have done so much, we might rest a while; we might pause. That is all my feeling—just to stop a little, to wait! I have seen so many changes. I wish to draw in, to draw in—to hold back, to hold back.”
“You shouldn’t hold your daughter back!” I answered, laughing and getting up. I got up, not by way of terminating our interview, for I perceived Mrs. Church’s exposition of her views to be by no means complete, but in order to offer a chair to Miss Aurora, who at this moment drew near. She thanked me and remained standing, but without at first, as I noticed, meeting her mother’s eye.
“You have been engaged with your new acquaintance, my dear?” this lady inquired.