What does it all amount to?—I do not know. There may be some sort of supernal bookkeeping, somewhere, but very certainly it is not conformable to any human mathematics.
_THE CORDS OF VANITY
"His has been the summer air, and the sunshine, and the flowers; and gentle ears have listened to him, and gentle eyes have been upon him. Let others eat his honey that please, so that he has had his morsel and his song."_
1.
He Sits Out a Dance
When I first knew Stella she was within a month of being fifteen, which is for womankind an unattractive age. There were a startling number of corners to her then, and she had but vague notions as to the management of her hands and feet. In consequence they were perpetually turning up in unexpected places and surprising her by their size and number. Yes, she was very hopelessly fifteen; and she was used to laugh, unnecessarily, in a nervous fashion, approximating to a whinny, and when engaged in conversation she patted down her skirts six times to the minute.
It seems oddly unbelievable when I reflect that Rosalind—"daughter to the banished Duke"—and Stella and Helen of Troy, and all the other famous fair ones of history, were each like that at one period or another.
As for myself, I was nine days younger than Stella, and so I was at this time very old—much older than it is ever permitted anyone to be afterward. I cherished the most optimistic ideas as to my impendent moustache, and was wont in privacy to encourage it with the manicure-scissors. I still entertained the belief that girls were upon the whole superfluous nuisances, but was beginning to perceive the expediency of concealing this opinion, even in private converse with my dearest chum, where, in our joyous interchange of various heresies, we touched upon this especial sub-division of fauna very lightly, and, I now suspect, with some self-consciousness.
2
All this was at a summer resort, which was called the Green Chalybeate. Stella and I and others of our age attended the hotel hops in the evening with religious punctuality, for well-meaning elders insisted these dances amused us, and it was easier to go than to argue the point. At least, that was the feeling of the boys.