Edith Nesbit

“ Miss Voscoe went on, "girls look around so as they can tell there's more different sorts of boys than there are of squashes. Then when they get married to a husband it's because they like him, or because they like his dollars, or for some reason that isn't just that he's the only one they've ever said five words on end to."
"There's something in that," Betty owned; "but my aunt says men never want to be friends with girls—they always want—"
"To flirt? May be they do, though I don't think so. Our men don't, any way. But if the girl doesn't want to flirt things won't get very tangled up." ”

“ Why should they be?" she said in a tone that convicted Betty of a social lapse in the putting of the question. Yet she defended herself.
"Well, you know, in England people don't generally go about together like that unless they're engaged, or relations."
"Yes," said Miss Voscoe, filling her glass from the little bottle of weak white wine that costs threepence at Garnier's, "I've heard that is so in your country. Your girls always marry the wrong man, don't they, because he's the first and only one they've ever had the privilege of conversing with?" ”

“ If money were short it was borrowed from the first friend one met, and quite usually repaid when the home allowance arrived. A young man would borrow from a young woman or a young woman from a young man as freely as school-boys from each other. Most girls had a special friend among the boys. Betty thought at first that these must be betrothed lovers. Miss Voscoe, the American, stared when she put the question about a pair who had just left the restaurant together with the announcement that they were off to the Musée Cluny for the afternoon. ”

“ The leaves were falling in brown dry showers in the Rectory garden, the chrysanthemums were nearly over, the dahlias blackened and blighted by the first frosts. A few pale blooms still clung to the gaunt hollyhock stems ”

“ Vernon's the Ancient Light. He's older than you are, isn't he?"
The roar of appreciation of her little joke surprised Betty, and, a little, pleased her—till Miss Voscoe whispered under cover of it:
"Ancient light? Then he was the three-polite-word man?"
Betty explained her little jest.
"All the same," said the other, "it wasn't any old blank walls you were thinking about. I believe he is the one."
"It's a great thing to be able to believe anything," said Betty; and the talk broke up into duets. She found that Temple was speaking to her. ”