Kate Coventry | Page 2

gloves, and apologize to her for their
being so large that she can get both her hands into one.
Now the only thing we ever fall out about is what my aunt calls
propriety. I had a French governess once who left because I pinned the
tail of Cousin John's kite to her skirt, and put white mice in her
work-box; and she was always lecturing me about what she called "les
convenances." Aunt Deborah don't speak much French, though she says
she understands it perfectly, and she never lets me alone about
propriety. When I came home from church that rainy Sunday with
Colonel Bingham, under his umbrella (a cotton one), Aunt Deborah
lectured me on the impropriety of such a thing--though the Colonel is
forty if he is a day, and told me repeatedly he was a "safe old
gentleman." I didn't think him at all dangerous, I'm sure. I rode a race
against Bob Dashwood the other morning, once round the inner ring,
down Rotten Row, to finish in front of Apsley House, and beat him all
to ribbons. Wasn't it fun? And didn't I kick the dirt in his face? He

looked like a wall that's been fresh plastered when he pulled up. I don't
know who told Aunt Deborah. It wasn't the coachman, for he said he
wouldn't; but she heard of it somehow, and of course she said it was
improper and unladylike, and even unfeminine--as if anything a woman
does can be unfeminine. I know Bob didn't think so, though he got the
worst of it every way.
To be sure, we women are sadly kept down in this world, whatever we
shall be in the next. If they would only let us try, I think we could beat
the "lords of the creation," as they call themselves, at everything they
undertake. Dear me, they talk about our weakness and vanity--why,
they never know their own minds for two minutes together; and as for
vanity, only tell a man you think him good-looking, and he falls in love
with you directly; or if that is too great a bounce--and indeed very few
of them have the slightest pretensions to beauty--you need only hint
that he rides gallantly, or waltzes nicely, or wears neat boots, and it will
do quite as well. I recollect perfectly that Cousin Emily made her great
marriage--five thousand a year and the chance of a baronetcy--by
telling her partner in a quadrille, quite innocently, that "she should
know his figure anywhere." The man had a hump, and one leg shorter
than the other; but he thought Emily was dying for him, and proposed
within a fortnight. Emily is an artless creature--"good, common-sense,"
Aunt Deborah calls it--and so she threw over Harry Bloomfield and
married the hump and the legs that didn't match and the chance of the
baronetcy forthwith; and now they say he beats her, and I think it
serves her right.
But we women--gracious! if we only take the trouble we can turn the
whole male sex round our little fingers. Who ever saw half a dozen of
us hovering and watching and fussing round a masculine biped,
thankful even to be snubbed rather than not noticed at all. Who ever
saw us fetch and carry like so many retrievers, and "sit up," so to speak,
for a withered rose-bud at the fag end of an over-blown bouquet. Not
that we don't love flowers in their proper places, and keep them too,
sometimes long after their colour has faded and their perfume gone; but
we don't make a parade of such things, and have the grace to be
ashamed of ourselves when we are so foolish.

But it's quite different with men. They give in to us about everything if
we only insist--and it's our own fault if we don't insist; for, of course, if
they find us complying and ready to oblige, why, there's no end to their
audacity. "Give 'em an inch, and they take an ell." However, they do try
to keep us down as much as they can. Now there's that very exercise of
riding that they are so proud of. They get us a side-saddle, as they call
it, of enormous weight and inconvenience, on which they plant
pommels enough to impale three women; they place us in an attitude
from which it is next to impossible to control a horse should he be
violent, and in a dress which ensures a horrible accident should he fall;
added to which, they constantly give us the worst quadruped in the
stable; and yet, with all these drawbacks, such is our own innate talent
and capacity, we ride many an impetuous steed in safety and comfort
that a man would find a dangerous and incontrollable "mount."