"
"But not at all; they are all coming back to enjoy it all the more!"
cried the Frenchman. "Oh that I were an Englishman, to get such a
dinner, and to be so loyal to it!"
CHAPTER XXXVI
FAIR CRITICISM
Few things can be worse for a very young woman than to want to be led
by somebody, and yet find nobody fit to do it. Or at any rate, through
superior quickness and the knowledge of it, to regard old friends and
relatives of experience as very slow coaches, and prigs or prudes, who
cannot enter into quick young feelings, but deal in old saws which grate
upon them.
Not to moralise about it--for if young ladies hate anything, it is such
moralising--Miss Dolly Darling was now in that uncomfortable frame of
mind when advice is most needed, yet most certain to be spurned. She
looked upon her loving and sensible sister as one who was fated to be
an old maid, and was meant perhaps by nature for that condition, which
appeared to herself the most abject in the world. And even without that
conclusion about Faith she would have been loth to seek counsel from
her, having always resented most unduly what she called her "superior
air of wisdom." Dolly knew that she was quicker of wit than her
sister--as shallow waters run more rapidly--and she fancied that she
possessed a world of lively feelings into which the slower intellect
could not enter. For instance, their elder brother Frank had just
published a volume of poems, very noble in their way, and glowing with
ardour for freedom, democracy, and the like, as well as exhibiting fine
perception of sound, and great boldness in matters beyond sounding, yet
largely ungifted with knowledge of nature, whether human or superior.
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