“Oh, just marrying.”
“You mustn’t think about it at all, dear. I want you to marry some time. But put it out of your mind until the time comes. Just be happy and then, when the time comes when you want to choose a man, let me know him a little first.”
“Of course,” Cecily became judicious, “I may never marry at all.”
Mrs. Warner smiled and closed the conversation rather rapidly.
“We can let that rest, dear.”
She lingered to look over Cecily’s wardrobe, criticizing with severity the frocks which Cecily put before her. Heretofore there always had been three new black Peter Thompson suits, a blue mohair and a white net dress each year. Now it seemed all the standards were to be changed. Even Cecily’s loved blue sweater was cast into the discard. She was to have new things, an appalling amount.
She lay wide awake, too happy to sleep, while her mother went into the library and sat down before her husband with a gesture of mock despair.
“Cecily frightens me to death,” she declared. “Here she is, all grown-up and absolutely terrifying. She is full of a kind of wiseness which I suppose reflects the nuns. Imagine, she has just been talking about marriage. Said she had been thinking about it.”
Mr. Warner reflected her own dismay and question. “But where did she meet any men?”
“That’s just it—she hasn’t. She thinks about marriage in general. I didn’t encourage the subject. Imagine, at eighteen, coolly contemplating it without a giggle.”