But girls' friendships are often made by propinquity, neighbourhood, adjacent homes, and constant meetings in the ordinary round of life.
The average girl, especially if living in the country, has not usually a very large circle of acquaintances from which to choose her friends (and notwithstanding what is said about the sufficiency of family affections, I do think a "particular friend" is almost a necessity to girl nature, and need not and ought not to interfere with home ties and interests). Even if her mother's visiting list is long, each household will not include a girl of her own age with whom she could be intimate, and many will live at a distance to make frequent intercourse out of the question.
Yes, your circle will narrow to some five or six, perhaps even three or four, girls, and you will naturally see most of the one living nearest to you.
You meet in your strolls, if you live in the country, you continually "drop in" to tea and tennis at each other's houses. If you live in a town, you drop in just before or just after your round of more formal visits, and you get to know each others' daily lives, daily interests, pleasures, and difficulties very thoroughly, and this interweaving of the day-to-day existence forms many a friendship.
You get accustomed to each other; the trivial incidents of the hour, perhaps its gossip, which have a transient interest for the one, interests the other no less. Your friend knows just what work you are doing, just what book you are reading. You have a great deal of time for talking, and by degrees each knows almost everything about the life of the other, for the lives are short, and at this period neither profound nor intricate.
Now, if you are really fitted to be friends to one another, this intimacy may be a very good beginning; you know each other thoroughly, and the mutual affection, sympathy, and help I spoke of in a former paper are much more possible when there is such perfect acquaintance. At the same time there are features in such a friendship which tell very much against the idea of its long continuance.
To begin with, such frequent meetings must often exhaust the materials for conversation. Girls do not usually "take in" to such large extent that they can be continually "giving out" with interest to their hearers. Do you not sometimes find that you have nothing more to say to your friend since you saw her yesterday? You have had one short, stupid letter from a school companion, you have tried your hand at making orange fritters and failed, and cook says you must try something easier; you have read a little more of the book you discursed yesterday, and done a little more of the painting, and when these subjects are disposed of conversation flags.
You begin to find each other just a little, a very little dull, and it is really a relief to meet a slighter acquaintance to whom you can tell the whole history of the painting, or the last tennis party for the first time.
I do not believe that "familiarity breeds contempt" between people who are worth knowing and loving, but I do think that girls are all the better for having certain chambers in their hearts, into which even the special "intimate" may not enter; and for being by herself at times, instead of continually hunting up a companion, for hours which would otherwise be solitary. Girls don't think enough, and how can they if they are constantly in the company of those who think no more, and so seldom by themselves.
You would become closer friends if you took time apart to progress individually, each in the direction her character or opportunities point out.