It Was Even More Amusing,
But Touching As Well, To Witness An Unexpected Meeting Between The Two
Wives, Perhaps At
The door of some poor cottage, to which both had gone
on the same beautiful errand of love and compassion
To some stricken
soul, and exchanging only a short "Good-day," the democrat's wife
stiffening her knee-joints so as to look straighter and taller than
usual.
XVI
LITTLE GIRLS I HAVE MET
Perhaps some reader who does not know a little girl her psychology,
after that account of the Alvediston maidie who presented me with a
flower with an arch expression on her face just bordering on a mocking
smile, will say, "What a sophisticated child to be sure!" He would be
quite wrong unless we can say that the female child is born
sophisticated, which sounds rather like a contradiction in terms. That
appearance of sophistication, common in little girls even in a remote
rustic village hidden away among the Wiltshire downs, is implicit in,
and a quality of the child's mind - the female child, it will be
understood - and is the first sign of the flirting instinct which shows
itself as early as the maternal one. This, we know, appears as soon as
a child is able to stand on its feet, perhaps even before it quits the
cradle. It seeks to gratify itself by mothering something, even an
inanimate something, so that it is as common to put a doll in a baby-
child's hands as it is to put a polished cylindrical bit of ivory - I
forget the name of it - in its mouth.
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