Mrs A has the imagination, the poetry of a Murillo, and has sufficient power of execution to show that she might have had a great deal more. From a material difficulty, not a mental one. If she has a knife and fork in her hands during three hours of the day, she cannot have a pencil or brush. Dinner is the great sacred ceremony of this day, the great sacrament. To be absent from dinner is equivalent to being ill.
Bodily incapacity is the only apology valid.
People have no type before them in their lives, neither fathers and mothers, nor the children themselves. They look at things in detail. They say, 'It is very desirable that A, my daughter, should go to such a party, should know such a lady, should sit by such a person'. It is true. The very words are rejected as pedantic.