"Seems to me, it is near enough for you to be something besides a child."
"What's the harm, mother?"
"Harm?" said Mrs. Copley with a sharp accent; "why, when one has a woman's work to do, one had better be a woman to do it. How is a child to fill a woman's place?"
"I have only a child's place to fill, just now," said Dolly merrily. "I have no woman's work to do, mother."
"Yes, you have. You have got to go into society, and play your part in society, and be married by and by; and then you'll know that a woman's part isn't so easy to play."
Dolly looked grave.
"But we are going to England, mother; where we know nobody. I don't see how we are to go into much society."
"Do you suppose," said Mrs. Copley very irately, "that with your father's position his wife and daughter will not be visited and receive invitations? That is the one thing that reconciles me to going. We shall have a very different sort of society from what we have here. Why you will go to court, Dolly; you will be presented; and of course you will see nothing but people of the very best circles."
"I don't care about going to court."
"Why not? You are a goose; you know nothing about it. Why don't you want to go to court? Your father's daughter may, as well as some other people's. Why don't you care about it?"