Ebook The Grasshoppers

When Hilary Frere first expressed a wish to go to College her mother wept. Mrs. Frere had not trained up her daughter to walk in such a path at this. She had never seen any of the Women's Colleges, nor had she ever know a person who lived in one, nor was she in the habit of reading anything more about them than the chance paragraphs that appear in the daily papers and the fashion books. Nevertheless, like many others of her generation, she cherished a lively dislike of these institutions. The very name of one still sends an unpleasing thrill through the frames of many respectable and otherwise intelligent persons. It conjures up a vision of womanhood with the graces left out. It suggests an aggressive creature, brimful of the knowledge to be gathered from text-books, and lacking the modesty that recognises a yet wider, deeper knowledge in other people.