I wonder whether it will do any good to tell Dolores all about
it. Only I can't get at all the other girls I may have hurt.'
'Nay, Bessie, I think it most likely that Dolores would have been an
uncomfortable damsel, even if Clare had remained in your brain. There
were other causes, at any rate, here are three more persecuted nieces
in her library. Besides, as you observed, everybody does not go to
story-books for views of human nature, and happily, also, homeless
children are commoner in books than out of them, so I don't think the
damage can be very extensive.'
'One such case is quite enough! Indeed, it is a great lesson to think
whether what one writes can give any wrong notion.'
'I believe one always does begin with imitation.'
'Yes, it is extraordinary how little originality there is in the world.
In the literature of my time, everybody had small hands and high
foreheads, the girls wanted to do great things, and did, or did not do,
little ones, and the boys all took first classes, and the fashion was
to have violet eyes, so dark you could not tell their colour, and
golden hair.'
'Whereas now the hair is apt to be bronze, whatever that may be like.'
'And all the dresses, and all the complexions, and all the lace, and
all the roses, are creamy. Bessie, I hope you don't deal in
creaminess!'
'I'm afraid skim milk is more like me, and that you would say I had
taken to the goody line. I never thought of the responsibility then,
only when I wrote for David's classes.
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