Page:In the dozy hours, and other papers.djvu/205

 Rh is ignored as completely as if she had not reached the interesting age of thirteen. "A good-humored, well-disposed girl," this is all the description vouchsafed her; after which, in the absence of further information, we forget her existence entirely, until we are reminded in the last chapter that she has "reached an age highly suitable for dancing, and not very ineligible for being supposed to have a lover." In other words, she is now ready for treatment at the novelist's hands; only, unhappily, the story is told, the final page has been turned, and her chances are over forever.

I well remember my disappointment, as a child, at being able to find so little about children in the old-fashioned novels on our bookshelves. Trollope was particularly trying, because there were illustrations which seemed to promise what I wanted, and which were wholly illusive in their character. Posy and her grandfather playing cat's-cradle, Edith Grantly sitting on old Mr. Harding's knee, poor little Louey Trevelyan furtively watching his unhappy parents,—I used to read all around these pictures in the hope of learning more about the children so portrayed.