“But that's all passed long ago, from what I hear,” retorted Mrs. Pasmer. “I know very well that it used to be thought a great advantage for a girl to be brought up in Cambridge, because it gave her independence and ease of manner to have so many young men attentive to her. But they say the students all go into Boston now, and if the Cambridge girls want to meet them, they have to go there too. Oh, I assure you that, from what I hear, they've changed all that since our time, Mr. Mavering.”
Mrs. Pasmer was certainly letting herself go a little more than she would have approved of in another. The result was apparent in the jocosity of this heavy Mr. Mavering's reply.
“Well, then, I'm glad that I was of our time, and not of this wicked generation. But I presume that unnatural supremacy of the young men is brought low, so to speak, after marriage?”
Mrs. Primer let herself go a little further. “Oh, give us an equal chance,” she laughed, “and we can always take care of ourselves, and something more. They say,” she added, “that the young married women now have all the attention that girls could wish.”
“H'm!” said Mr. Mavering, frowning. “I think I should be tempted to box my boy's ears if I saw him paying another man's wife attention.”
“What a Roman father!” cried Mrs. Pasmer, greatly amused, and letting herself go a little further yet. She said to herself that she really must find out who this remarkable Mr. Mavering was, and she cast her eye over the hall for some glimpse of the absent Munt, whose arm she meant to take, and whose ear she meant to fill with questions. But she did not see him, and something else suggested itself. “He probably wouldn't let you see him, or if he did, you wouldn't know it.”
“How not know it?”
Mrs. Primer did not answer. “One hears such dreadful things. What do you say—or you'll think I'm a terrible gossip—”
“Oh no;” said Mr. Mavering, impatient for the dreadful thing, whatever it was.
Mrs. Primer resumed: “—to the young married women meeting last winter just after a lot of pretty girls had came out, and magnanimously resolving to give the Buds a chance in society?”
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