Page:My Dear Cornelia (1924).pdf/135

 enjoy while it lasts; but it is silly to grieve over it. Other beauties follow—the full moon, and birds that break the lovely blue shells to bits and sing. Dorothy is breaking through her shell. That is all."

Cornelia sighed: "If it only were! But you don't know anything about the revolution that takes place in a girl's mind, and in her character, the moment she puts on the badge of those who have ceased to care for 'intactness!

"I'm not sure that I do."

"Well, the next time that you see three girls with bobbed hair and knickers—abominable word!—and with cigarettes in their mouths, edge up to them and overhear if you can what they are talking about: some unmentionable novel, some unprintable verse, some unspeakable ideas of some outrageous 'reformer,' something revolting that is sanctioned in Europe but, alas, has not yet been sanctioned here, some silly 'martyr' who has got into jail for some offence against decency, some crazy girl who has ruined herself as completely as the heroine of the latest novel. Perhaps you will hear them discussing what I overheard a group of our modern maidens debating not long ago—whether if a man and a woman registered