ELLY and Mrs. Martin were driving down to Hurlingham. The afternoon was at its height, and the long suburban highway was gay with parasols, and pleasantly responsive to high-bred hoofs and politely silent tires. Nelly had just emerged from a convent-school; and was full of that extensive knowledge of the world, which can be culled from monthly magazines and the conversation of young ladies who had enjoyed equal opportunities of learning how the world goes round. She was imparting to Mrs. Martin a complete code of morals and manners, comprehensive enough for all mankind, with a specialized branch devoted to a girl's behavior.
“You see,” she concluded, “if people would only think out a plan for themselves, all the gaucheries and mistakes and heartburnings which are supposed to be inevitable might be done without!”
Mrs. Martin's beautifully dressed head inclined toward her niece with a flattering air of attention to valuable remarks
“That would be charming,” she replied. “Experience would no longer be essential to the right conduct of life.”
“Yes. That's just what I think,” said Nelly, warming toward so promising a pupil. “So much nonsense is talked about experience. People say that one can't profit except by one's own. It's ridiculous. I am starting out with no practical experience at all; but I am just as well equipped as any so-called woman of the world.”
Mrs. Martin, herself one of the so-called, had encouraged the conversation to the point when it seemed ripe for discussion. She never spoiled an argument by refuting it before it had reached the stage when it was worthy of her steel. Some people called this “turning round on you.”
“It is possible, however,” she observed, gazing at the silver buttons on her coachman's coat, “that a person might be told all about how strawberries grow, what they look like, and how they taste; and yet the exact flavor, and the pains that an undue quantity of that fruit can produce, might come as a wholly unexpected sensation, if not an unpleasantly startling one. Of course, this is only a speculation,” concluded Mrs. Martin, with a charming air of passing it on for consideration by a fine intellect. Her niece accepted it with proportionate empressement. She opened and shut her pretty Watteau fan (a delightfully grown-up possession) before pronouncing upon Mrs. Martin's suggestion. Nelly was no impulsive, thoughtless schoolgirl.
A slow lightening of her face announced shortly that proper attention had been given to the proposition, and she and Mrs. Martin turned to each other with the mutual interest of donor and receiver.
“One could find out exactly what quantity of strawberries would cause pain, and stop before one had just reached that quantity,” said Nelly, trying obviously not to appear bored at the banality of Mrs. Martin's observation.
Mrs. Martin allowed herself to reply unhesitatingly that different digestions can accommodate different quantities.
Nelly pondered over this for some seconds, as it contained an undoubted truth which nothing short of Christian Science could deny with any conviction.
“But,” she said triumphantly, furling the harassed fan with a decisive click, “there must be a reasonable minimum, up to which no harm could possibly be done.”
“Not at all,” said Mrs. Martin. “There are some people to whom even a single strawberry causes serious inconvenience.”
“I suppose you mean that the only way to find out is by tasting?” answered Nelly, after a slight and somewhat baffled pause.
“Precisely,” said Mrs. Martin pithily. “Look at Mrs. Henrickson's new grays. Aren't they steppers?”
A lady of the mature age of nineteen is not to be put off with careless chit-chat when embarked on argument, however.
“All the same, there must be some way of finding out, or at least of guessing,” she said. “Thinking it out beforehand must do some good. For instance, I, who have planned out exactly how to manage my behavior, must be better off than a girl like Mouse, who plunges into things headlong.”
Mouse was another niece who was sharing Mrs. Martin's ægis.
“Mouse is very popular,” said her aunt, in a non-committal tone.
“But she is so often confused and loses her self-possession,” persisted Nelly.
“I don't think any one thinks that remarkable or to be regretted in a young girl,” answered Mrs. Martin, with beautiful serenity.