“Attention?” echoed Cornelia, shrilly, and rolled her eyes to the firmament. “Attention? You ken sit there and look me in the face, and talk about the ‘attention’ that’s been paid me the last two weeks! You’re crazed! Where does the attention come in, I want to know? I haven’t spoken to a single man since the day I arrived. You don’t call a dozen old ladies clucking round attention, do you? Where are all the young men, anyhow? I have been used to a heap of men’s society, and I’m kind of lost without it. I call attention having half a dozen nice boys to play about, and do whatever I want. Don’t you ever have any nice young men to take you round?”
Elma’s dissent was tinged with shocked surprise, for she had been educated in the theory that it was unmaidenly to think about the opposite sex. True, experience had proved that this was an impossibility, for thoughts took wing and flew where they would, and dreams grew of themselves—dreams of someone big, and strong, and tender; someone who would understand, and fill the void in one’s heart which ached sometimes, and called for more, more; refusing to be satisfied with food and raiment. Sometimes the dream took a definite shape, insisted on the possession of grey eyes and wide square shoulders, associating itself with the personality of a certain young squire of racing, bridge-playing tendencies, at whom all Park dwellers glanced askance, refusing to him the honour of their hospitality!
There remained, however, certain functions at which this outlaw must annually be encountered; functions when one was thrillingly conscious of being signalled out for unusual attention. One remembered, for example, being escorted to eat ices, under the shade of an arbour of crimson ramblers; of talking with tongues about the weather, and the flowers, and the music; while grey eyes looked into blue, and said unutterable things. Oh, the beauty of the sky seen through those rosy branches! Oh, the glory of the sun! There had never been such a summer day before. ... Elma trembled at the remembrance, and then blushed at her own audacity. It was terrible to have to acknowledge such things to one’s inmost heart, but to put them into words—! She pursed her lips, and looked demurely scandalised by her companion’s plain speaking.
“Do you know, Cornelia,”—she had been commanded to use the Christian name, but it still came with a certain amount of hesitation—“if I were you I would not talk like that before your aunt. We—we don’t do it over here! It is not considered—nice—for a girl to talk about young men.”
Cornelia smiled slowly. Her beautiful lips curved upwards at the corner, giving an air of impish mischief to her face. She nodded her head three times over, and hitched a shoulder under the muslin gown.
“We–ell?” she drawled in her most pronounced accent, “if I’ve got to think of ’em, I might as well talk of ’em, and I’m bound to think of ’em!” She relaxed the grasp of her knees, and lay back against the trunk of a tree, chuckling softly in retrospective triumph. “I’ve had such heaps of fun! I just love to carry on, and have half-a-dozen boys quarrelling over me, and hustling to get the first chance. I’ve had as many as ten bouquets before a ball, and I wore an eleventh, which I’d gotten for myself, and they were all clean crazed to find out who’d sent it. Poppar says I’ll be an old maid yet, but it won’t be for want of asking. There’s one young man who’s just daft about me—he’s young, and he’s lovely, and he’s got ten million and a hef dollars, and I’ve tried to love him.” She sighed despairing. “I’ve tried hard, but I ken’t!”
Elm a struggled between disapproval, curiosity, and a shocking mingling of something else, which was not, could not possibly be, envy of such adventures! The lingering doubt served to add severity to her indictment.
“It’s very wicked to flirt!”
Once again Cornelia flashed her impish smile.
“It’s vurry nice! I don’t see a mite of use in being young if you ken’t have some fun. You grow old fast enough, and then there’s nothing else to it but to sit round and preach. Your mother and Aunt Soph have just got to preach, but I wouldn’t start yet awhile if I were you. You’d be just the prettiest thing that was ever seen if you knew how to fix yourself up, but you don’t, and you seem to me to mope along the whole blessed time, without a bit of fun to perk you up. Say! don’t you feel a bit tired of it sometimes? Don’t you ever have a kind of feeling that you want to do something for a change?”