Page:Books and men.djvu/95

 Rh mists of story-book land, the indignant ghost of little English Rosamond, burning to defend, with all her old impetuosity, the mother whom she so dearly loved. It is true, she had no sense of a "mission," this commonplace but very amusing little girl. She never, like Rose, adopted a pauper infant, or made friends with a workhouse orphan; she never vetoed pretty frocks in favor of philanthropy, or announced that she would "have nothing to do with love until she could prove that she was something beside a housekeeper and a baby-tender." In fact, she was probably taught that love and matrimony and babies were not proper subjects for discussion in the polite society for which she was so carefully reared. The hints that are given her now and then on such matters by no means encourage a free expression of any unconventional views. "It is particularly amiable in a woman to be ready to yield, and avoid disputing about trifles," says Rosamond's father, who plainly does not consider his child in the light of a beneficent genius; while, when she reaches her teens, she is described as being "just at that age when girls do not join in conversation, but when they sit