What a really nice girl might have done with him I cannot tell, but fate
had thrown none such in his way except his youngest sister Alethea, whom
he might perhaps have liked if she had not been his sister. The result
of his experience was that women had never done him any good and he was
not accustomed to associate them with any pleasure; if there was a part
of Hamlet in connection with them it had been so completely cut out in
the edition of the play in which he was required to act that he had come
to disbelieve in its existence. As for kissing, he had never kissed a
woman in his life except his sister--and my own sisters when we were all
small children together. Over and above these kisses, he had until quite
lately been required to imprint a solemn flabby kiss night and morning
upon his father's cheek, and this, to the best of my belief, was the
extent of Theobald's knowledge in the matter of kissing, at the time of
which I am now writing. The result of the foregoing was that he had come
to dislike women, as mysterious beings whose ways were not as his ways,
nor their thoughts as his thoughts.
With these antecedents Theobald naturally felt rather bashful on finding
himself the admired of five strange young ladies.
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