Page:The Confessions of a Well-Meaning Woman.djvu/165



LADY ANN (to a friend of proved discretion): Oh, but I fully believe they do it! There were rumours even before the war. To my mind, the idea that any girl should ask a man to marry her is so repugnant that I can hardly think of it calmly. All so-called “Leap-Year jokes” seem to me to be in execrable taste. . . Since the war, with these millions of superfluous women, I am told that it has become quite common. You have always had the cranks who claimed that a woman had as much right to choose a husband as a husband to choose a wife; and now girls like my niece Phyllida say that, with the general upset of war, a little money frightens a man away and, if you want him to see that a difference of means is not a real obstacle, you have to take the first step. I’m inclined to say: “Rubbish, child, rubbish”—and again “Rubbish”. Since when have young men developed these fantastic scruples? And does any girl think that the only way of securing a man is to propose to him ? I should have imagined. . . But I was brought up in a different school. ..