"To pay his debts, perhaps," said the provoking old woman.
"Ah, no, ma'am," she replied, very innocently, "he never paid them. He was told that it was a very fine climate, and he came for the good of our health."
"Why, my dear, you look as if you never had had a day's sickness in your life."
"No more I have," she replied, putting on a very languid air, "but I am very delicate."
This term delicate, be it known to my readers is a favourite one with young ladies here, but its general application would lead you to imagine it another term for laziness. It is quite fashionable to be delicate, but horribly vulgar to be considered capable of enjoying such a useless blessing as good health. I knew a lady, when I first came to the colony, who had her children daily washed in water almost hot enough to scald a pig. On being asked why she did so, as it was not only an unhealthy practice, but would rob the little girls of their fine colour, she exclaimed,--
"Oh, that is just what I do it for. I want them to look delicate. They have such red faces, and are as coarse and healthy as country girls."
The rosy face of the British emigrant is regarded as no beauty here. The Canadian women, like their neighbours the Americans, have small regular features, but are mostly pale, or their faces are only slightly suffused with a faint flush. During the season of youth this delicate tinting is very beautiful, but a few years deprive them of it, and leave a sickly, sallow pallor in its place. The loss of their teeth, too, is a great drawback to their personal charms, but these can be so well supplied by the dentist that it is not so much felt; the thing is so universal that it is hardly thought detrimental to an otherwise pretty face.
But, to return to the mere pretenders in society, of which, of course, there are not a few here, as elsewhere. I once met two very stylishly-dressed women at a place of public entertainment. The father of these ladies had followed the lucrative but unaristocratic trade of a tailor in London. One of them began complaining to me of the mixed state of society in Canada, which she considered a dreadful calamity to persons like her and her sister; and ended her lamentations by exclaiming,--
"What would my pa have thought could he have seen us here to-night? Is it not terrible for ladies to have to dance in the same room with storekeepers and their clerks?"
Another lady of the same stamp, the daughter of a tavern-keeper, was indignant at being introduced to a gentleman, whose father had followed the same calling.