Had
he seen and known the cause there would have been no end to the
teasing.
Nowadays Meg spent a great deal of time in her bedroom, that she
had all to herself while Judy was away. In its privacy she
trimmed and retrimmed her hats, altered her dresses, read her
novels, and sat in front of the looking-glass with her hair down,
dreaming of being quite grown up and in love. For just now both
to Aldith, and herself that state of life seemed the only one
altogether lovely and desirable. Meg used to curl herself up in a
big easy-chair that had drifted to her room because its springs
were broken, and dream long, beautiful, hopeless dreams of a lover
with "long black lashes and a soldierly carriage." Of course it
was highly reprehensible to have such thoughts at the tender age
of sixteen, but then the child had no mother to check that erring
imagination, and she was a daughter of the South.
Australian girls nearly always begin to think of "lovers and
nonsense," as middlefolks call it, long before their English aged
sisters do. While still in the short-frock period of existence,
and while their hair is still free-flowing, they take the keenest
interest in boys--boys of neighbouring schools, other girls' brothers,
young bank clerks, and the like.
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