April Hopes | Page 6

people feel in her talk.
"Oh; it's too vast a subject. But they tell you about charming girls
moping the whole evening through at Boston parties, with no young
men to talk with, and sitting from the beginning to the end of an
assembly and not going on the floor once. They say that unless a girl
fairly throws herself at the young men's heads she isn't noticed. It's this
terrible disproportion of the sexes that's at the root of it, I suppose; it
reverses everything. There aren't enough young men to go half round,
and they know it, and take advantage of it. I suppose it began in the
war."

He laughed, and, "I should think," he said, laying hold of a single idea
out of several which she had presented, "that there would always be
enough young men in Cambridge to go round."
Mrs. Pasmer gave a little cry. "In Cambridge!"
"Yes; when I was in college our superiority was entirely numerical."
"But that's all passed long ago, from what I hear," retorted Mrs. Pasmer.
"I know very well that it used to be thought a great advantage for a girl
to be brought up in Cambridge, because it gave her independence and
ease of manner to have so many young men attentive to her. But they
say the students all go into Boston now, and if the Cambridge girls
want to meet them, they have to go there too. Oh, I assure you that,
from what I hear, they've changed all that since our time, Mr.
Mavering."
Mrs. Pasmer was certainly letting herself go a little more than she
would have approved of in another. The result was apparent in the
jocosity of this heavy Mr. Mavering's reply.
"Well, then, I'm glad that I was of our time, and not of this wicked
generation. But I presume that unnatural supremacy of the young men
is brought low, so to speak, after marriage?"
Mrs. Primer let herself go a little further. "Oh, give us an equal
chance," she laughed, "and we can always take care of ourselves, and
something more. They say," she added, "that the young married women
now have all the attention that girls could wish."
"H'm!" said Mr. Mavering, frowning. "I think I should be tempted to
box my boy's ears if I saw him paying another man's wife attention."
"What a Roman father!" cried Mrs. Pasmer, greatly amused, and letting
herself go a little further yet. She said to herself that she really must
find out who this remarkable Mr. Mavering was, and she cast her eye
over the hall for some glimpse of the absent Munt, whose arm she
meant to take, and whose ear she meant to fill with questions. But she
did not see him, and something else suggested itself. "He probably
wouldn't let you see him, or if he did, you wouldn't know it."
"How not know it?"
Mrs. Primer did not answer. "One hears such dreadful things. What do
you say--or you'll think I'm a terrible gossip--"
"Oh no;" said Mr: Mavering, impatient for the dreadful thing, whatever
it was.

Mrs. Primer resumed: "--to the young married women meeting last
winter just after a lot of pretty girls had came out, and magnanimously
resolving to give the Buds a chance in society?"
"The Buds?"
"Yes, the Rose-buds--the debutantes; it's an odious little word, but
everybody uses it. Don't you think that's a strange state of things for
America? But I can't believe all those things," said Mrs. Pasmer,
flinging off the shadow of this lurid social condition. "Isn't this a pretty
scene?"
"Yes, it is," Mr. Mavering admitted, withdrawing his mind gradually
from a consideration of Mrs. Pasmer's awful instances. "Yes!" he added,
in final self-possession. "The young fellows certainly do things in a
great deal better style nowadays than we used to."
"Oh yes, indeed! And all those pretty girls do seem to be having such a
good time!"
"Yes; they don't have the despised and rejected appearance that you'd
like to have one believe."
"Not in the least!" Mrs. Pasmer readily consented. "They look radiantly
happy. It shows that you can't trust anything that people say to you."
She abandoned the ground she had just been taking without apparent
shame for her inconsistency. "I fancy it's pretty much as it's always
been: if a girl is attractive, the young men find it out."
"Perhaps," said Mr: Mavering, unbending with dignity, "the young
married women have held another meeting, and resolved to give the
Buds one more chance."
"Oh, there are some pretty mature Roses here," said Mrs. Pasmer,
laughing evasively. "But I suppose Class Day can never be taken from
the young girls."
"I hope not," said Mr. Mavering. His wandering eye fell upon some
young men bringing refreshments