“I don’t say we have any very big troubles to bear,” said Betty. “I—I almost sometimes find myself wishing we had—”
“Oh, Betty, don’t,” said her sister quickly, “don’t wish anything like that!”
“No,” said Betty, “I wasn’t going to say quite what you thought. I mean I wish anything big would come into our lives! Anything really interesting, and—well, yes! I may as well own it—anything exciting! It is all on such a dull, dead level, and has always been the same, and always will be, it seems to me. And when one is no longer very young the spring and buoyancy seem to go. When I was seventeen or eighteen I’d all sorts of happy fancies and expectations, but now—why, Francie, I’m twenty-four, and nothing has come.”
For a moment or two Frances walked on in silence.
“I dare say,” she said at last, “if we knew more of other lives, we should find a good many something like ours. And after all, Betty, one’s real life is what one is oneself.”
Betty laughed slightly. Her laugh was not bitter, but without any ring of joyousness.
“I know that,” she said. “But it doesn’t do me any good. It’s just myself that depresses me. I’m not big enough, nor brave enough, nor anything enough, to rise above circumstances, as people talk about. I want circumstances to help me a little! And I don’t ask anything very extravagant, I know.
“No, Frances,” she added, “you’re not—not quite right. I think I could bear things better and feel more spirit if you would allow that our lives are exceptional in some ways.”
“Perhaps so,” the elder sister agreed.
“You know,” continued Betty, “it isn’t fallings in love or marriage that I’m talking about. I really and truly very seldom think of anything of that kind, though of course, in the abstract, I can see that a home of one’s own, and the feeling oneself a centre, is the ideal life; but heaps of girls don’t marry, and there are plenty, lots of other interests and objects to live for, which we are unusually without!”