For a child, particularly a girl,
under twenty to speak of having a "sweetheart" was an offence which had
a strong savour of disgust in it, even for Mrs. Mesurier, broad-minded
as in most matters she was.
So far as the only decent theory of the relations of the sexes was
involuntarily explicit, by virtue of certain explosions on the subject,
it was something like this: That, at a certain age, say twenty-one, or,
for leniency, twenty, as it were on the striking of a clock, the young
girl, who previously had been profoundly and inexpressibly unconscious
that the male being existed, would suddenly sit up wide awake in an
attitude of attention to offers of marriage; and that, similarly, the
young man, who had meanwhile lived with his eyes shut and his senses
asleep, would jump up also at the striking of a clock, and, as it were,
with hilarity, say, "It is high time I chose a wife," and thereupon
begin to look about, among the streets and tennis-parties known to him,
for that impossible paragon,--a wife to satisfy both his parents.
One or two of Henry's earliest troubles and most drastic punishments had
come of a propensity to "sweethearts," developed at an indecorously
early age, and in fact at the time of which I write he could barely
recall the name of Miss This or Miss The Other by the association of
ancient physical pangs suffered for their sake.
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