Page:Wiggin--Ladies-in-waiting.djvu/208

  ent, but I am so under her thumb at the moment that I am a flabby mass of indecision. I have no more mind than a jellyfish, yet I have to decide a matter of vital importance within a month. How can I make up a non-existent mind? Answer me that. Your life is so fixed and serene and settled; so full of absorbing work; you are so flattered and appreciated that you are like a big ship anchored in a safe harbor, and you can’t think what it’s like to be a silly little yacht bobbing about on the open sea!” (Such is the uncomprehending viewpoint of twenty toward thirty; the calm assumption that ladies of that mature age can have no love-affairs of their own to perplex them!)

“There is no need of your being a silly little yacht, Dolly!” I answered. “If you want to make a real voyage you have the power to choose your craft.”

“Mother always chooses for me,” she said with a pout. “She does n’t gag me and put me in irons and lead me up the gangplank by brute force, but she dominates me.