‘I wish I could have kept my stockings clean.’

‘But what about the young men?’

’Young men are pretty much the same everywhere, I guess.  They never have their wits about them.  They never mean what they say, because they don’t understand the use of words.  They are generally half impudent and half timid.  When in love they do not at all understand what has befallen them.  What they want they try to compass as a cow does when it stands stretching out its head towards a stack of hay which it cannot reach.  Indeed there is no such thing as a young man, for a man is not really a man till he is middle-aged.  But take them at their worst they are a deal too good for us, for they become men some day, whereas we must only be women to the end.’

‘My word, Bella!’ exclaimed the mother.

’You have managed to be tolerably heavy upon God’s creatures, taking them in a lump,’ said the father.  ’Boys, girls, and cows!  Something has gone wrong with you besides the rain.’

Nothing on earth, sir,—­except the boredom.’

‘Some young man has been talking to you, Bella.’

’One or two, mother; and I got to thinking if any one of them should ask me to marry him, and if moved by some evil destiny I were to take him, whether I should murder him, or myself, or run away with one of the others.’

’Couldn’t you bear with him till, according to your own theory, he would grow out of his folly?’ said the father.

’Being a woman,—­no.  The present moment is always everything to me.  When that horrid old harridan halloed out that somebody was smoking, I thought I should have died.  It was very bad just then.’

‘Awful!’ said Mrs Boncassen, shaking her head.

‘I didn’t seem to feel it much,’ said the father.  ’One doesn’t look to have everything just what one wants always.  If I did I should go nowhere;—­but my total of life would be less enjoyable.  If ever you do get married, Bell, you should remember that.’

’I mean to get married some day, so that I shouldn’t be made love to any longer.’

‘I hope it will have that effect,’ said the father.

‘Mr Boncassen!’ ejaculated the mother.

’What I say is true.  I hope it will have that effect.  It had with you, my dear.’

’I don’t know that people didn’t think of me as much as of anybody else, even though I was married.’

‘Then, my dear, I never knew it.’

Miss Boncassen, though she had behaved serenely and with good temper during the process of Dolly’s proposal, had not liked it.  She had a very high opinion of herself, and was certainly entitled to have it by the undisguised admiration of all that came near her.  She was not more indifferent to the admiration of young men than are other young ladies.  But she was not proud of the admiration of Dolly Longstaff.  She was here among strangers whose ways were unknown to her, and wonderful in their dimness.  She knew