"Oh, if you make fun of everything----" Aunt Theresa began; but at this moment Mrs. St. John was announced. After the customary civilities, Aunt Theresa soon began to talk of poor Matilda, and Mrs. St. John entered warmly into the subject. To do the ladies of the regiment justice, they sympathized freely with each other's domestic troubles; and indeed it was not for lack of taking counsel that any of them had any domestic troubles at all. "Girls are a good deal more difficult to manage than boys, I'm afraid," sighed Aunt Theresa, repeating Mrs. O'Connor's _dictum_. "Women are _dreadful_ creatures at any age," said Mrs. St. John to the Major, opening her brown eyes in the way she always does when she is talking to a gentleman. "I always _longed_ to have been a man." [Eleanor says she hates to hear girls say they wish they were boys. If they do wish it, I do not myself see why they should not say so. But one thing has always struck me as very odd. If you meet a woman who is incomparably silly, who does not know an art or a trade by which she could keep herself from starvation, who could not manage the account-books of a village shop, who is unpunctual, unreasoning, and in every respect uneducated--a woman, in short, who has, one would think, daily reason to be thankful that her necessities are supplied by other people, she is pretty sure to be always regretting that she is not a man. Another, trick that some silly ladies have _riles_ me (as we say in Yorkshire) far more than this odd ambition for responsibilities one is quite incompetent to assume. Mrs. St. John had it, and as it was generally displayed for the benefit of gentlemen, who seem as a rule to be very susceptible to flattery, I suppose it is more a kind of drawing-room "pretty talk" than the expression of deliberate opinions. It consists of contrasting girls with boys and women with men, to the disparagement of the former, especially in matters over which circumstances and natural disposition are commonly supposed to give them some advantage. I remember hearing a fat, good-natured girl at one of Aunt Theresa's garden-parties say, with all the impressiveness of full conviction, "Girls are far more cruel than boys, really. You know, women are _much_ more cruel than men--oh, I'm _sure_ they are!" and the idea filled me not less with amazement than with horror. This very young lady had been most good-natured to us. She had the reputation of being an unselfish and much-beloved elder sister. I do not think she would have hurt a fly. Why she said this I cannot imagine, unless it was to please the young gentleman she was talking to. I think he did look rather gratified. For my own part, the idea worried my little head for a long time--children give much more heed to general propositions of this kind than is commonly supposed.]