A great many young men think so; and you appear to me
never to have been properly aware of that. You have always had a
little way of alluding to her as an unmarriageable girl."
"My allusions are as kind as yours, Elizabeth," said the Doctor
frankly. "How many suitors has Catherine had, with all her
expectations--how much attention has she ever received? Catherine is
not unmarriageable, but she is absolutely unattractive. What other
reason is there for Lavinia being so charmed with the idea that there
is a lover in the house? There has never been one before, and
Lavinia, with her sensitive, sympathetic nature, is not used to the
idea. It affects her imagination. I must do the young men of New
York the justice to say that they strike me as very disinterested.
They prefer pretty girls--lively girls--girls like your own.
Catherine is neither pretty nor lively."
"Catherine does very well; she has a style of her own--which is more
than my poor Marian has, who has no style at all," said Mrs. Almond.
"The reason Catherine has received so little attention is that she
seems to all the young men to be older than themselves. She is so
large, and she dresses--so richly. They are rather afraid of her, I
think; she looks as if she had been married already, and you know
they don't like married women. And if our young men appear
disinterested," the Doctor's wiser sister went on, "it is because
they marry, as a general thing, so young; before twenty-five, at the
age of innocence and sincerity, before the age of calculation.
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