About
this, however, I had made up my mind before I appeared in the busy
arena of fashionable society. Twice a week now I put on some of my
expensive new toilets and went with my step-mother in our handsome
conveyance to make calls. I was presented to every one of any note,
and drank tea in the best drawing-rooms the Capital could boast of. So
far my step-mother looked happy. I had not been awkward at
introductions, nor dull in conversations. I had even made some very
pithy remarks where they could do me most service, and knew the name
of a historic personage to whom Lady Pendleton alluded vaguely,
forgetting his title. I was invaded in my turn on our reception day by
all the wealth and beauty of the capital. Great, pompous dames in
heavy mantles and rustling robes sat themselves down in imposing
condescension beside me to discuss the last dinner party at Government
House, or recite a series of domestic woes brought on by that
refractory necessity--the cook. Simpering young ladies, and simpering
ladies that were no longer young, greeted me with a pretty,
patronizing courtesy, and smiled upon my remarks as sweetly as we
grown people do at the crude observances of a prattling child.
There was a time I must admit when I was only a child in the eyes of
some of these maidens. When I was ten and they were twenty how far
apart we stood in sympathies and tastes? But it is astonishing how
rapidly youth overtakes maturity. Although the inevitable disparity of
years can never be altered or overcome, the material differences which
necessarily accrue from it are easily mastered.
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