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"Yes, Polly, you'll do," he said, while an approving smile wrinkled his vast countenance. "Fit for a queen any day. A lady ha! ha! Have you done your duty to Aunt Maria, Polly, eh? Have you made a lady of her, eh? Have you infused into her something allied to the angelic, eh? Come, now, a rousing nor'-wester!" With a laugh worthy of her girlhood, Polly ran out of her corner and obeyed orders.
She goes into society to dance, she visits her relatives to show you off, she journeys on with an escort of love's first wiles; she is gradually transformed from girlhood to womanhood. Then she becomes mother and nurse, and in this situation, full of charming pangs, that leaves neither a word nor a moment for observation, such are its multiplied cares, it is impossible to judge of a woman.
Why should we dissipate it in an hour? It is ungrateful, impious to do it. We ought to prize and retain it as a divine benefaction. God could as well have made Girlhood ugly as beautiful. His wisdom and love chose to make it a model of grace and elegance. Has he laid a necessity upon woman's nature that this beauty shall last but an hour? Far from it.
A boiler pressed full of steam would be useless without an engine to use and apply its forces, and the engine would be as useless without the boiler. Why, then, is Girlhood so prodigal of its health and strength? Why does it imprison itself in close, hot rooms? Why live on a diet that no brute could bear? Why confine every limb and muscle of its body?
Elmira's Aunt Belinda Lamb had given her, some time before, a white muslin gown of her girlhood. "I 'ain't got any daughter to make it over for," said she, "an' you might as well have it." Belinda Lamb had looked regretfully at its voluminous folds, as she passed it over to Elmira.
Yet she understood that even in her girlhood, even in the April freshness of her beauty, she had never touched the depths of his nature. It was Alice Rokeby frightened, shallow, desperate, deserted, whom he had loved. "What do you want?" she asked quietly. "What do you wish me to do?" "Oh, I don't know!" replied Alice. "I don't know. I haven't thought but there ought to be something.
For Alice had lived, from early in her girlhood, a life of flowers, and song, and wine, and dance; and, in her later years, had herself been mistress of these revels by office of mistress of the hula house.
"Yes, ma, I know you can't refuse," said Grace. Mrs. Clifford hesitated. "The stories are yellow with age, Grace; they were written in my girlhood: and they are rather torn and disarranged, if I remember. Besides, my child, my flowing hand is difficult to read." "Oh, mamma, I think you write beautifully! splendidly!" "Another objection," continued Mrs.
Recollecting that these spice censers of Autumn were her mother's favorite flowers, she stooped and broke several lovely clusters of orange and garnet color, hoping that a lingering breath of perfume from the home of her girlhood, might afford at least a melancholy pleasure to the distant invalid.
She had grown an elderly woman, without losing the color of her yellow hair; and the bloom of girlhood had been stayed in her cheeks as if by the young habit of blushing, which she had kept. She was still what her neighbors called very pretty-appearing, and she must have been a beautiful girl.
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