Confessions of a Well-Meaning Woman
reed. “Assert yourself!,” I used to say. “If you don’t absorb her, she’ll absorb you.” That is the only occasion on which I have ever interfered in matters of the heart, either to guide or check; I look at Ruth Brackenbury and say to myself: “Ann Spenworth, you have your lesson ever before you.” I would not urge or hinder now, even with my own son. Phyllida may try to fix responsibility on me, but I repudiate it—entirely. In the present instance I feel that it is, once again, the sins of the parents. . . As I felt it my duty to tell them, there wouldn’t have been a moment’s trouble with Phyllida, if she had been brought up differently. . .
I? Goodness me, no! Many, many things will have to be unsaid before Brackenbury induces me to set foot in his house again. You know whether I am the woman to stand on my dignity, but, when one’s niece writes one letters in the third person. . . Indeed I know what I am talking about! “Lady Phyllida Lyster presents her compliments to Lady Ann Spenworth and is not interested in any explanation that Lady Ann may think fit to put forward.” These are the manners of the war. From the very first I urged Brackenbury not to let her work in that hospital; some one had to go, of course; I’m not so foolish as to think that a hospital would run itself without hands, but
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