Even if all parties
were agreed, the husband's relations and the wife's relations and
everyone else, what are you going to teach a child worth knowing
before she gets to the age of twelve? Just enough to make her
discontented with her lot. Once get the natives to alter their
customs and to marry their women at the age of eighteen, and you
may do something for them; but as long as they stick to this idiotic
custom of marrying them off when they are still children, the case
is hopeless."
"There is something I wanted to ask you, Doctor," Isobel said.
"You know this is the first time I have had anything to do with
entertaining, and I know nothing about decorating a table. Uncle
says that you are a great hand at the arrangement of flowers. Would
you mind seeing to it for me?"
The Doctor nodded. "With pleasure, Miss Hannay. It is a thing I
enjoy. There is nothing more lamentable than to see the ignorant.
and I may almost say brutal, way in which people bunch flowers up
into great masses and call that decoration. They might just as well
bunch up so many masses of bright colored rags. The shape of the
flower, its manner of growth, and its individuality are altogether
lost, and the sole effect produced is that of a confused mass
of color. I will undertake that part of the business, and you had
better leave the buying of the flowers to me."
"Certainly, Doctor," the Major said; "I will give you carte blanche."
"Well, I must see your dinner service, Major, so that I may know
about its color, and what you have got to put the flowers into.
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