CHAPTER V





The lessons with Hilda period lasted till Rosalie was twelve. "Take
her off your mother's hands. That's what you've left school for,"
was her father's instruction to Hilda; and so there was Rosalie,
put out from her mother's knee to the schoolroom like a small new
ship out from the haven to the bay; and there was that small mind
of hers come in to the company of Hilda and of Flora and of Anna
with the obsession that men were infinitely more important and
much more wonderful than women. She knew now that the world did
not belong to men in the literal sense, but belonged, as her mother
had instructed her, to God; but she knew with the abundant evidence
of all that went on about her that everything in the world was done
for men and that women were largely occupied in doing it; and she
knew, from the same testimony, that men were much more interesting
to watch than women, rather in the way that dogs were much more
interesting than cats. Men, like dogs, were much more satisfactory:
that was it. Her mind was throwing out feelers towards the wonders
of the world and this was the feeler that was most developed. She
came to her sisters very highly sensitive to the difference between
men and women. And her sisters showed her the difference.