Page:The Confessions of a Well-Meaning Woman.djvu/74

 Spenworth—why conceal it? I wished Kathleen could have been equally frank, could have seen herself as I saw her. She is within a few months of thirty-nine, with four strapping girls; one does expect a certain dignity and restraint at that age. I know what you are going to say! We of the older generation usually expect more than we receive. I have learnt that lesson, thank you! Kathleen seemed to fancy that she was back in the period of this boy-and-girl attachment to which I have alluded. She and Captain Laughton were inseparable. He took her to dances. . . as if she were eighteen! Indecent, I considered it. And I wondered what her girls thought of their mother,—if they’re capable of thinking at all. I don’t associate brains with that chocolate-box beauty. . . Dances, dinners, little expeditions. Every one was beginning to smile. . . “If she’s not careful,” Will said to me one day, “she’ll cook her own goose as well as Spenworth’s.” I had to ask him to express his fears in simpler language.

“There is such a person as a King’s Proctor,” he said, “though they don’t seem aware of it. If she plays the fool with Laughton, the decree won’t be made absolute; and she and Spenworth will be tied to each other