Aunt Elizabeth says they mean it
kindly, and perhaps they do. But if you have ever had ten men and women
trying to improve you, you will know what my life is. Tom Price, who
married my sister Maria, told Dr. Denbigh once that "every time a
Talbert is unoccupied he or she puts Alice or Billy, or both, on the
family moulding-board and kneads awhile." I heard him say it and it's
true. All _I_ can say is that if they keep on kneading and moulding me
much longer there won't be anything left but a kind of a pulpy mass. I
can see what they have done to Billy already; he's getting pulpier
every day, and I don't believe his brain would ever work if I didn't
keep stirring it up.
However, the thing I want to say while I think of it is this. It is a
question, and I will ask it here because there is no use of asking it
at home: Why is it that grown-up men and women never have anything
really interesting to say to a girl fifteen years old? Then, if you can
answer that, I wish you would answer another: Why don't they ever
listen or understand what a girl means when she talks to them? Billy
and I have one rule now when we want to say something serious. We get
right in front of them and fix them with a glittering eye, the way the
Ancient Mariner did, you know, and speak as slowly as we can, in little
bits of words, to show them it's very important.
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