You have been unduly influenced, it is only too apparent, by
a class of literature which, with all due respect to
distinguished authoress that shall be nameless, I must call the
New Woman Literature. In that deleterious ingredient of our book
boxes--"
"I don't altogether agree with you there," said Miss Mergle,
throwing her head back and regarding him firmly through her
spectacles, and Mr. Widgery coughed.
"What HAS all this to do with me?" asked Jessie, availing herself
of the interruption.
"The point is," said Mrs. Milton, on her defence, "that in my
books--"
"All I want to do," said Jessie, "is to go about freely by
myself. Girls do so in America. Why not here?"
"Social conditions are entirely different in America," said Miss
Mergle. "Here we respect Class Distinctions."
"It's very unfortunate. What I want to know is, why I cannot go
away for a holiday if I want to."
"With a strange young man, socially your inferior," said Widgery,
and made her flush by his tone.
"Why not?" she said. "With anybody."
"They don't do that, even in America," said Miss Mergle.
"My dear young lady," said the clergyman, "the most elementary
principles of decorum--A day will come when you will better
understand how entirely subservient your ideas are to the very
fundamentals of our present civilisation, when you will better
understand the harrowing anxiety you have given Mrs. Milton by
this inexplicable flight of yours. We can only put things down at
present, in charity, to your ignorance--"
"You have to consider the general body of opinion, too," said
Widgery.
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