The
titillation of watching the clock for tea, and of tea, and then,
most sharpest titillation of them all, watching the clock for--time!;
for--off!; for--out!; away! That is the charm of it in detail. The
charm in general, as once expressed to Rosalie by one of Doda's
friends brought in to tea one Sunday is, "You see, it gets you
through the day."
That's it. The night's all right. There's nearly always something
doing for the night. It's just the day would be so hopeless were
there not this lively way of "getting through the day." That's it,
for Doda.
Until she found her feet--not in her office, but at home at first
emergence from her school--until she found her feet she often used
to be kept uncommonly late at office. In a very short while she
found her feet and that excuse no longer was put forward. Every
girl of Doda's association was on her feet in 1919; and for Doda
very much easier, at that, than for the generality, to establish
her position in the house. By 1920, when she was nineteen, she was
conducting her life as she pleased, as nineteen manifestly should.
In 1921, when she was twenty, the war work was over and she was
"getting through the day" much as she lived the night. It was pretty
easy to get through the day in 1921. That which the curmudgeons
called license, and liberty the free, was in 1921 held by charter
and by right prescriptive.
Look at her. There she is. She's lovelier yet, if that which was
her budding loveliness could bear a lovelier hue.
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