From the days of their childhood, a close intimacy had subsisted between her and Jenny Jackson, who had been her playmate and confidant from the earliest period of her recollection. But somewhat more than a year previous to the time here referred to, Jenny had arrived at that age when it is common for parents in a certain station to send their daughters to "service out amang the farmers round," as Burns has phrased it, that they "may learn something of the world." This, at least, is almost always assigned as a general reason for such a step, and almost as often taken for granted. There are, however, several adjuncts, which nobody ever thinks of mentioning, and sundry little motives of a private or personal nature, which are not without their influence in determining both the parents and the girls themselves upon the propriety of going abroad. In the first place, when a young woman comes to be married--and most of them have a sort of presentiment that, at one time or other, they will have the _misfortune_ to be so--she is always expected to provide, or bring along with her, a certain share of the furnishing of a house. Her share having been fixed by a sort of conventional laws, there is no escaping from it: at least there can be but little prospect of an honourable settlement in life without it--the other sex having, in general, enough to do with their own part of the concern, and being by no means more disinterested than the "true love" ballad-makers have represented them. To enable her to make this provision, the parents of a portionless lass can seldom do more than lend her some little assistance in the way of advice and management, leaving her to procure the wherewithal, or, in other words, the money with which the furnishing of houses, and everything else, must be purchased by her own industry. Thus left, service in the country, and some regular occupation, such as the art of weaving in the towns, are the only alternatives; and to one or other of these she must early devote her attention, if she intends to be in the field of matrimony within a reasonable time.
To those who are acquainted with the tactics of the tender passion, it is, moreover, known that a bashful lover seldom cares for seeking the society of his fair one in the presence of her parents, while the fair one herself as seldom cares for being seen in the society of a lover by these relations. In such matters, a great deal of deceit, or, to speak more properly, of concealment, must be practised. There is a luxury in keeping all those delightful feelings, hopes, fears, fancies, and follies to one's-self; more than half the excitement of the thing, and consequently more than half its pleasure, would be destroyed if the secret were too soon divulged; and for some such reason, perhaps, your enamoured swain fears the eye of a mother, as being an interested party, and likely to be quick-sighted, more than that of any other human being. Whatever be the cause, the effect which it produces seems to be tolerably well understood by a very great majority of marriageable young women; and out of pity, as it would appear, for the failings of the other sex in general, and those of bashful young men in particular, they are sometimes willing to afford wooers an opportunity of seeing them in a less embarrassing situation.