This poor little girl should elicit more of our sympathy than of our
contempt. She is the sad little victim of over-indulgent parents. She
doesn’t quite understand what it is all about nor can she understand
just exactly what it is that keeps her against the wall and those
others, some of them not half so pretty as she, dancing all the time.
Nor can she understand why she of all people has to suffer this way.
Poor little kid! So very sensitive is she that she notices everything
that is liable to hurt her. She hears, when she shouldn’t, things that
make her hurt the worse.
She notices when her hostess, in a fit of compassion for her, tries to
guide one of the young men in her direction, and she notices, too,
that the young man makes a wry face and she imagines she hears him say
that he is so sorry but he is all full and can’t possibly do a thing
for her.
After not a few attempts this very evening, our hostess got me to dance
with her. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that she was a very
good dancer and withal quite a nice little girl who seemed to be quite
young. I discovered, when I asked her, that she had attended a convent
school in New Orleans.
The fact that she had gone to such a school would explain her general
fear of men and possibly her intense dislike for them in some cases.
She had allowed herself to be influenced too greatly by the teachings
of the sisters and from their precept she had seen that a life of
chastity was the only life for bringing perfect happiness.
That was my first diagnosis. Later I discovered that she had long since
seen the error of that and in trying to remedy it herself had become
excessively self-conscious.
I found her to be quite apologetic about every little thing. Due to her
sudden attempt at change she had become body-conscious. If she touched
me ever so slightly in a way that seemed to her mind improper she
would be very careful to call my attention to it by saying: “O, I beg
your pardon.” She did not know that the greater number of her supposed
gaucheries or unintended intimacies would have gone unnoticed if she
had not been so very careful about my noticing them. And it is not
because I am unusually opaque that I do not notice such things either.
I’m just not conscious of other bodies any more.
And besides she would not say the word “pardon” in that connection; she
should use the better and certainly less emphatic word “excuse.”
I can think of nothing which will cure this type of wallflower. The
only thing to do, so far as I know, is to let the poor child grow up
and grow out of it the best way she can. All she needs is experience
and age.