No boy can resist being fed well by a
good-natured and still handsome woman. Boys are very like nice dogs in
this respect--give them a bone and they will like you at once. Alethea
employed every other little artifice which she thought likely to win
their allegiance to herself, and through this their countenance for her
nephew. She found the football club in a slight money difficulty and at
once gave half a sovereign towards its removal. The boys had no chance
against her, she shot them down one after another as easily as though
they had been roosting pheasants. Nor did she escape scathless herself,
for, as she wrote to me, she quite lost her heart to half a dozen of
them. "How much nicer they are," she said, "and how much more they know
than those who profess to teach them!"
I believe it has been lately maintained that it is the young and fair who
are the truly old and truly experienced, inasmuch as it is they who alone
have a living memory to guide them; "the whole charm," it has been said,
"of youth lies in its advantage over age in respect of experience, and
when this has for some reason failed or been misapplied, the charm is
broken.
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