Am I exaggerating? Go, and judge for yourselves, my bachelor friends. Go, if you like, and meet my domestic sample at a ball.
My bachelor is introduced to Miss Violet, and takes his place with her in a quadrille. He begins a lively conversation, and finds her attention wandering. She has not heard a word that he has been saying, and she interrupts him in the middle of a sentence with a question which has not the slightest relation to anything that he has hitherto offered by way of a remark.
"Have you ever met my sister Rose before?"
"She is standing there, at the other end, in a blue dress. Now, do tell me, does she not look charming?"
My bachelor makes the necessary answer, and goes on to another subject. Miss Violet's attention wanders again, and she asks another abrupt question.
"What did you think of mamma, when you were introduced to her?"
My bachelor friend makes another necessary answer. Miss Violet, without appearing to be at all impressed by it, looks into the distance in search of her maternal parent, and then addresses her partner again:
"It is not a pleasant thing for young people to confess," she says, with the most artless candour, "but I really do think that mamma is the handsomest woman in the room. There she is, taking an ice, next to the old lady with the diamonds. Is she not beautiful? Do you know, when we were dressing to-night, Rose and I begged and prayed her not to wear a cap. We said, 'Don't, mamma; please don't. Put it off for another year.' And mamma said, in her sweet way, 'Nonsense, my loves! I am an old woman. You must accustom yourselves to that idea, and you must let me wear a cap; you must, darlings, indeed.' And we said--what do you think we said?"
"We said, 'You are studying papa's feelings, dear--you are afraid of being taken for our youngest sister if you go in your hair,--and it is on papa's account that you wear a cap. Sly mamma!'--Have you been introduced to papa?"
Later in the evening my bachelor friend is presented to Miss Rose. He asks for the honour of dancing with her. She inquires if it is for the waltz, and hearing that it is, draws back and curtsies apologetically.
"Thank you, I must keep the waltz for my brother George. My sister and I always keep waltzes for our brother George."