Alderley, when told about it, took, I think, a wise course. "Certainly she must unburden, if she wishes to," he said; "but she must go to Ludlow and tell the story in person. I won't have it done by letter." And so Drusilla, very unwillingly, when the time came (our moral duty being often a confoundedly uncomfortable thing, which it is far simpler to neglect) was packed off to Ludlow with her poor little history of revolt, which (as her father had foreseen) was becoming a good deal of a bore. The old lady, like her son, took it very well, Drusilla's honesty in the matter pleasing her far more than the unwomanliness of the conduct displeased her. Moreover, very old people rather like a little dare-devil in the young. But Drusilla had her punishment too. "Well, well," Grandmamma said, "we won't say any more about it. What we must do for you now, my dear, is to find you a nice husband;" the result being a series of garden-parties and picnics at which curates and youthful squires were shamelessly paraded before our little firebrand, almost as if she had been a marriageable South Sea islander, as indeed she practically was. When it comes to marriage we are all savages. Drusilla, however, to use a phrase of Lionel's, was not taking any. She frightened the squires with her politics, and the curates with her theology, or the want of it. "My dear Grandmamma," she said, "I don't want to marry." "Nonsense, child," said the old lady; "of course you want to marry. All women do. What you mean is, you don't want to marry any one that you don't want to marry." Drusilla did not acquiesce, but the chorus of Alf Pinto's latest song, as repeated far too often by Dollie Heathcote and Lionel, ran through her head-- "Mr. Right! Mr. Right! He may not have knocked just yet; But cheer up, girls, he is putting on his boots, And he'll soon be here, you bet." Mr. Right! Mr. Right! Was there a Mr. Right for every one? she wondered; for obviously the music-hall philosophy was a little too general. Statistics alone proved that. As it turned out--but we shall see. CHAPTER XIX SOME MODERN CHILDREN ARE PROVIDED WITH SOME VERY CONGENIAL MATERIAL FOR LAUGHTER On a fine Sunday afternoon Naomi and I walked through three parks and Kensington Gardens to have tea with the Estabrooks. On Sunday they have a sit-down tea round the schoolroom table: a meal notable for cake and noise. I put into my pocket a recent discovery at Bemerton's--a little manual for children belonging to the early eighteenth century, entitled _The Polite Academy, or School of Behaviour for Young Gentlemen and Ladies, intended as a foundation for good manners and polite address in Masters and Misses_. "Do you want to hear me read something?" I asked after tea, and in response to a by no means frenzied appeal (for reading aloud is not the joy it was in my childhood) I began, after first explaining the purpose of the book.