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It was once the residence of a country squire, whose family, probably dwindling down to mere spinsterhood, got merged in the more territorial name of Donnithorne. It was once the Hall; it is now the Hall Farm.
But is this a reason, I only ask you, for leaving, like an uncultivated waste, that holy army of martyrs, the spinsterhood of Great Britain? Speak up for us! Write up for us!
"Oh, mother! mother!" groaned Lila from the fireplace. "You needn't interrupt me, Lila; you know quite well that a family is looked at askance when all of its members remain single. Surely one old maid and I am quite reconciled to poor Cynthia's spinsterhood is enough to leaven things, as your father used to say "
"And in no time at all I shall be thirty and entering upon a terrible period of spinsterhood!" "Spinsterhood!" he scoffed. "Why, whenever the Society papers are at a loss for a paragraph, they report a few more offers of marriage to the ever-beautiful Lady Cynthia." "Don't be sarcastic," she begged. "I haven't yet had the offer of marriage I want, anyhow."
And the generations crowded one against another; a girl worried about spinsterhood if she reached seventeen unwed. But in the next century? The frontier vanished, the driving need for population was gone.
In the presence of such an enterprising spinsterhood, bachelorhood had become an exceedingly hazardous existence, and if a man must marry, be might as weel ha' something young an' fresh! Margaret, too, was reputed industrious as pretty! Of Janet's decision, Saunders had no doubts. Between himself and Jeannie, and Timmins meek, mild, and unencumbered there could be no choice.
They prefer to accept the bitter alternative of spinsterhood, rather than the degrading sense of being less a partner than a property. They see that men are not grown, except physically. They suffer, unmated, and the tragedy lies in the leakage of genius from the race." Cairns' mind moved swiftly from one to another of the five women he had called together to meet his friend.
"Some time he'll forget one of 'em and give to the other, or drop 'em both and give to some new girl!" said Delia Weeks, with an experience born of fifty years of spinsterhood. "Like as not," assented Mrs. Peter Meserve, "though it's easy to see he ain't the marryin' kind.
Thus a new-laid egg is broken into a glass of water, and the shapes which it assumes foreshadow the fate of the person concerned. Again, seven saucers are placed in a row, filled respectively with water, earth, ashes, keys, a thimble, money, and grass, which things signify travel, death, widowhood, housekeeping, spinsterhood, riches, and farming.
She knew, she thought she knew, that she must refuse him, and in doing so would simply be making fresh trouble. Would it not have been better for her to have remained at Loring, to have put herself at once on a par with her aunt, and have commenced her life of solitary spinsterhood and dull routine? But, then, why should she refuse him?
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