I had grown considerably, and for a
person of tolerably good health, was very slender, which gave me the
appearance of being yet taller than I was, and I felt an instinctively
spiteful satisfaction in the consciousness that I had quite overcome
any tendencies I might ever have had towards being round-shouldered;
the regular calisthenic exercises which we went through at the convent
had made a decided change for the better in my personal appearance.
I was not long at home before I detected a resolution on the part of
my step-mother to adopt a new, and altogether plausible, attitude
towards me. I was no longer a child; that was a self-evident fact:
neither was I yet what society calls a "young lady," but now-a-days an
interesting medium has been established and acknowledged; it is the
first grade wherein the embryo society belles are initiated into all
the intricacies of high life. It has its own peculiarities, its
flutters of excitement, its rounds of pleasures, and distractions of
every kind, aye--it has even its gossip, although the whisperers are
but budding misses with golden or raven locks floating down their
backs.
It is the adolescent stage: where the lisp or drawl, most popular in
the advanced circles, is affected with unquestionable propriety: when
growing girls of susceptible sixteen, or thereabout, are meekly
subjected to a rigid training and instruction by their older and more
sophisticated sisters, when they learn "dauncing" and "tennis" and
"riding," and go to small-and-earlies where a few grown couples are
also invited to amuse them, or rather I should say instruct them.
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