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So she betook herself to pets, and growing up to the old-maidenhood of thirty-five before her father fell asleep, was by that time the centre of a little world of her own, hens, chickens, squirrels, cats, dogs, lambs, and sundry transient guests of stranger kind; so that, when she left her old home, and removed to the little house in Dalton that had been left her by her mother's aunt, and had found her small property safely invested by means of an old friend of her father's, Miss Manners made one more journey to Vermont to bring in safety to their future dwelling a cat and three kittens, an old blind crow, a yellow dog of the true cur breed, and a rooster with three hens, "real creepers," as she often said, "none of your long-legged, screaming creatures."
To a girl of nineteen the latter alternative seems more appalling than to a woman of thirty, whose eyes have grown strong in the gray, cold, sunless light of confirmed old-maidenhood; even as the vision of those who live in dim caverns requires not the lamps needed by new-comers fresh from the dazzling outer world.
The first impression was that she had suddenly taken fright at the prospect of old-maidenhood, and had grabbed the first man she could get, even though he was young enough to be her son. "He ain't twenty-one till Michaelmas," said Vine at the Woolpack. "She's always liked 'em young," said Furnese.
She had had her little romance, and it had been incontinently nipped in the bud by imperious mamma, and she had dutifully yielded, with the pain sharp in her heart all the same. But he was poor, and Mildred was weak, and so Lady Kingsland's only daughter glided uncomplainingly into old-maidenhood. My lady glanced over her shoulder, and greeted her son with a bright, loving smile.
"Yes," asserted the publisher, smoothing out the P. Ts.; "the old unreasoned instinct and repugnance will be put on a true basis when it is seen that childlessness is a proof of unworthiness a brand of failure." "As old-maidenhood is, less justly, to-day," I put in. "Quite so," said Marindin eagerly.
This lady was no longer young, according to the severe standards of that time of early marriages and correspondingly early "old-maidenhood," but so much the better, as she was therefore of suitable age for the elderly though spruce and prosperous widower. She was as suitable, in fact for the wife of ripe age as the flower-like Frances had been for the wife of youth.
She was occasionally suspected of that "eccentricity" which, in a woman of five-and-twenty, is looked upon as the first symptom of a tendency to old-maidenhood, but which is really the sign of an earnest heart struggling with the questions of life.
'Well, as long as you entertain these views, keep single by all means, and never marry at all: not even to escape the infamy of old-maidenhood. 'Well, Miss Grey, what do you think of the new curate? asked Miss Murray, on our return from church the Sunday after the recommencement of our duties. 'I can scarcely tell, was my reply: 'I have not even heard him preach.
Marriage may change your circumstances for the better, but, in my private opinion, it is far more likely to produce a contrary result.’ ‘So thinks Milicent; but allow me to say I think otherwise. If I thought myself doomed to old-maidenhood, I should cease to value my life. ‘Your circumstances are peculiar, I allow; but have patience, love; do nothing rashly.
This mother was so very old-fashioned that she believed that there was no career open to a girl beside marriage; the dreadful alternative was solitary old-maidenhood. She was a good mother, in many respects a wise mother; but she would not have slept that night had she believed that either of her daughters would attain to thirty years unmarried.
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