I had
felt that way about Cousin Martha myself at the Bunch's age, and we
exchanged a sympathetic smile on the subject.
"Well, what _are_ you going to do, Evelina?" asked Sallie, and she
turned such a young, helpless, wondering face up to me from the center
of her cluster of babies, that my heart almost failed me at the idea of
pouring what seemed to me at that moment the poison of modernity into
the calm waters of her and Cousin Martha's primitive placidity.
"You'll have to live some place where there is a man," she continued,
with worried conviction.
My time had come, and the fight was on. Oh, Jane!
"I don't believe I really feel that way about it," I began in the
gentlest of manners, and slowly, so as to feel my way. "You see, Sallie
dear, and dearest Cousin Martha, I have had to be out in the world so
much--alone, that I am--used to it. I--I haven't had a man's protection
for so long that I don't need it, as I would if I were like you two
blessed sheltered women."
"I know it has been hard, dear," said Cousin Martha gently looking her
sympathy at my lorn state, over her glasses.
"I don't see how you have stood it at all," said Sallie, about to
dissolve in tears. "The love and protection and sympathy of a man are
the only things in life worth anything to a woman. Since my loss I don't
know what I would have done without Cousin James. You must come into his
kind care, Evelina."
"I must learn to endure loneliness," I answered sadly, about to begin to
gulp from force of example, and the pressure of long hereditary
influence.
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