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"Would you like to be a boy?"
"I wonder! It's out of the question, any way."
Ramage reflected. "Why don't you?"
"Well, it might mean rather a row."
"I know--" said Ramage, with sympathy.
"And besides," said Ann Veronica, sweeping that aspect aside,
"what could I do? A boy sails out into a trade or profession.
But--it's one of the things I've just been thinking over.
Suppose--suppose a girl did want to start in life, start in life
for herself--" She looked him frankly in the eyes. "What ought
she to do?"
"Suppose you--"
"Yes, suppose I--"
He felt that his advice was being asked. He became a little more
personal and intimate. "I wonder what you could do?" he said.
"I should think YOU could do all sorts of things. . . .
"What ought you to do?" He began to produce his knowledge of the
world for her benefit, jerkily and allusively, and with a strong,
rank flavor of "savoir faire." He took an optimist view of her
chances. Ann Veronica listened thoughtfully, with her eyes on
the turf, and now and then she asked a question or looked up to
discuss a point. In the meanwhile, as he talked, he scrutinized
her face, ran his eyes over her careless, gracious poise,
wondered hard about her. He described her privately to himself
as a splendid girl. It was clear she wanted to get away from
home, that she was impatient to get away from home. Why? While
the front of his mind was busy warning her not to fall into the
hopeless miseries of underpaid teaching, and explaining his idea
that for women of initiative, quite as much as for men, the world
of business had by far the best chances, the back chambers of his
brain were busy with the problem of that "Why?"
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