Page:Arminell, a social romance (1896).djvu/291

Rh "Very well, mamma, I will go with the Fountaynes as papa wishes it."

He let go her hand, and went off. She looked affectionately after the child for a moment, and then resumed her duties as hostess, with an anxious heart but an untroubled brow.

From the first moment that our intelligence dawns, the first lessons impressed on us, lessons never pretermitted, from which no holiday gives release, relentlessly and systematically enforced, are those of self-suppression. We are not allowed as children even to express our opinions decidedly, to hate heartily any person or anything. We are required, for instance, to say nothing more forcible than—we are not devoted to our governess, and not partial to bread-and-butter pudding. We are instructed either to keep silence altogether relative to our feelings, which is best of all, a counsel of perfection; or if we cannot do that, to give utterance to them in an inoffensive and unobjectionable manner. We are taught to speak of a stupid person as amiable, and of a disagreeable person as well-intentioned. Our faces are not suffered to express what our tongues are not permitted to speak, consequently the facial muscles are brought into as complete control as the tongue.

Consequently also when we are thoroughly schooled, we wear masks perpetually and always go about with gloved tongues. At first, in the nursery and in the schoolroom, there are kicks and sulks, when the mask and the glove are fitted on, and yet, in time, we become so habituated to them that we are incapable of conceiving of life as endurable without the wearing of them.

I know that I have become so accustomed to a ring on my little finger, that if perchance I have forgotten it, and gone into society, I have blushed to the roots of my hair, and stammered and been distracted, thinking myself insufficiently clothed, simply because I had left my ring on