Girlhood and Womanhood | Page 4

scholar; you know you have your geography at your
finger-ends yet."

"Oh, don't tease me, Polly!" protested Conny impatiently.
"Dear Jack, hand me a sprig of broom to stick in Conny's ear," persisted
Polly in a loud whisper.
Constantia shook her head furiously, as if she were already horribly
tickled, and that at the climax of her plot.
"Never mind, Conny, I'll protect you. What a shame, Polly, to spoil her
pleasure!" cried Joanna indignantly.
"I beg your pardon, Donna Quixotina."
"I wonder you girls can waste your time in this foolish manner,"
lectured Lilias, with an air of superiority; "you are none of you better
than another, always pursuing amusement."
"What a story, Lilias!" put in Polly undauntedly; "you know I sew yard
upon yard of muslin-work, and embroider ells of French merino, and
task myself to get done within a given time. Aunt Powis says I make
myself a slave."
"Because you like it," declared Lilias disdainfully; "you happen to be a
clever sewer, and you are fond of having your fingers busy and
astonishing everybody--besides, you admire embroidery in muslin and
cloth; and even your pocket-money--what with gowns and bonnets,
tickets to oratorios and concerts, and promenades, and 'the kid shoes
and perfumery,' which are papa's old-fashioned summing up of our
expenses, bouquets and fresh gloves would be nearer the truth--won't
always meet the claims upon your gold and silver showers; and Susan,"
added Lilias, not to be cheated out of her diatribe, and starting with
new alacrity, "practising attitudes and looking at her hands; and Conny
reading her trashy romances."
"It is not a romance, Lilias," complained Conny piteously; "it is a tale
of real life."
"It is all the same," maintained the inexorable Lilias; "one of the most

aggravating novels I ever read was a simple story."
"Oh, Lilias, do lend it to me!" begged Polly; "I'm not literary, but it is
delightful to be intensely interested until the very hair rises on the
crown of one's head."
"I don't know that you would like it," put in Joanna; "it is not one of the
modern novels, and it has only one dismal catastrophe; it is the fine old
novel by Mrs. Inchbald."
"Then I don't want it; I don't care for old things, since I have not a
palate for old wines or an eye for old pictures. I hate the musty,
buckram ghosts of our fathers."
"Oh! but Mrs. Inchbald never raised ghosts, Polly; she manoeuvred
stately, passionate men and women of her own day."
"The wiser woman she. But they would be ghosts to me, Jack, unless
they were in the costume of the present day; there is not an inch of me
given to history."
"And you, Joanna," concluded Lilias, quite determined to breast every
interruption and finish her peroration, "you have listened, and smiled,
and frowned, and dreamt for an hour."
"I was waiting in case papa should want me," apologized Joanna, rather
humbly.
"That need not have hindered you from hemming round the skirt of this
frock."
"Oh, Lilias! I am sorry for you, girl," cried Polly. "You're in a diseased
frame of mind; you are in a fidget of work; you don't know the
enjoyment of idleness, the luxury of laziness. You'll spoil your
complexion; your hair will grow grey; no man will dare to trifle with
such a notable woman!"
"I don't care!" exclaimed Lilias bluntly and magnanimously. "I don't

want to be trifled with; I don't value men's admiration."
"Now! Now!! Now!!! Now!!!!" protested Polly; "I don't value men's
admiration either, of course, but I like partners, and I would not be fond
of being branded as a strong-minded female, a would-be Lady
Bountiful, a woman going a-tracking; that's what men say of girls who
don't care to be trifled with. But, Lilias, are you quite sure you don't
believe in any of the good old stories--the 'goody' stories I would call
them if I were a man--of the amiable girl who went abroad in the old
pelisse, and who was wedded to the enthusiastic baronet? My dears,
you must have observed they were abominably untrue; the baronet,
weak and false, always, since the world began, marries the saucy,
spendthrift girl, who is prodigal in rich stuffs, and bright colours, and
becoming fits, and neat boots and shoes--who thinks him worth
listening to, and laughing with, and thinking about--the fool."
"Really, Polly, you are too bad," cried both Susan and Lilias at once;
their stock-in-trade exhausted, and not knowing very well what they
meant, or what they should suggest further if this sentence were not
answer enough.
"Now, I believe Joanna does not credit the goody stories, or does not
care for them, rather; but we are not all heroines, we cannot all afford
an equal indifference."
Joanna coloured