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Update language tag
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erinendrei authored and acabal committed Dec 17, 2023
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<p>“Oh no, Lolly, I couldn’t think of taking it. Why, it’s a family ring.”</p>
<p>When Fancy Willowes had grown up, and married, and lost her husband in the war, and driven a lorry for the Government, and married again from patriotic motives, she said to Owen Wolf-Saunders, her second husband:</p>
<p>“How unenterprising women were in the old days! Look at Aunt Lolly. Grandfather left her five hundred a year, and she was nearly thirty when he died, and yet she could find nothing better to do than to settle down with Mum and Dad, and stay there ever since.”</p>
<p>“The position of single women was very different twenty years ago,” answered <abbr epub:type="z3998:name-title">Mr.</abbr> Wolf-Saunders. “<i xml:lang="fr">Feme sole</i>, you know, and <i xml:lang="fr">feme couverte</i>, and all that sort of rot.”</p>
<p>“The position of single women was very different twenty years ago,” answered <abbr epub:type="z3998:name-title">Mr.</abbr> Wolf-Saunders. “<i xml:lang="xno">Feme sole</i>, you know, and <i xml:lang="xno">feme couverte</i>, and all that sort of rot.”</p>
<p>Even in <time datetime="1902">1902</time> there were some forward spirits who wondered why that Miss Willowes, who was quite well off, and not likely to marry, did not make a home for herself and take up something artistic or emancipated. Such possibilities did not occur to any of Laura’s relations. Her father being dead, they took it for granted that she should be absorbed into the household of one brother or the other. And Laura, feeling rather as if she were a piece of property forgotten in the will, was ready to be disposed of as they should think best.</p>
<p>The point of view was old-fashioned, but the Willoweses were a conservative family and kept to old-fashioned ways. Preference, not prejudice, made them faithful to their past. They slept in beds and sat upon chairs whose comfort insensibly persuaded them into respect for the good sense of their forbears. Finding that well-chosen wood and well-chosen wine improved with keeping, they believed that the same law applied to well-chosen ways. Moderation, civil speaking, leisure of the mind and a handsome simplicity were canons of behaviour imposed upon them by the example of their ancestors.</p>
<p>Observing those canons, no member of the Willowes family had risen to much eminence. Perhaps great-great-aunt Salome had made the nearest approach to fame. It was a decent family boast that great-great-aunt Salome’s puff-paste had been commended by King George <span epub:type="z3998:roman">III</span>. And great-great-aunt Salome’s prayerbook, with the services for King Charles the Martyr and the Restoration of the Royal Family and the welfare of the House of Hanover⁠—a nice example of impartial piety⁠—was always used by the wife of the head of the family. Salome, though married to a Canon of Salisbury, had taken off her embroidered kid gloves, turned up her sleeves, and gone into the kitchen to mix the paste for His Majesty’s eating, her Venice-point lappets dangling above the floury bowl. She was a loyal subject, a devout churchwoman, and a good housewife, and the Willoweses were properly proud of her. Titus, her father, had made a voyage to the Indies, and had brought back with him a green parrokeet, the first of its kind to be seen in Dorset. The parrokeet was named Ratafee, and lived for fifteen years. When he died he was stuffed; and perched as in life upon his ring, he swung from the cornice of the china-cupboard surveying four generations of the Willowes family with his glass eyes. Early in the nineteenth century one eye fell out and was lost. The eye which replaced it was larger, but inferior both in lustre and expressiveness. This gave Ratafee a rather leering look, but it did not compromise the esteem in which he was held. In a humble way the bird had made county history, and the family acknowledged it, and gave him a niche in their own.</p>
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