126
FLAMING
YOUTH
aside from the polishing process, look to?
If hers were
just a stupid, satisfied mind, a pattern intellect like Constance’s, it would not so much matter. Or if she had the self-disc:pline and control which Dee’s athletics have given her, I should be less troubled. But Pat’s is a strange little brain; hungry, keen and uncontrolled. It -really craves food, and it is having its appetite blunted by sweets and drugs. Is there nothing that I can do? I hear you ask it. Yes; now that she is at home I can train her a little, but not rigorously, for her mind is toa soft and pampered to set itself seriously to any real task. In the days of her childish gluttony I used to drive her into a fury by mocking her for her pimples, and finally, by excoriating her vanity, got her to adopt a reasonable dict. The outer pimples are gone. But if one could see her mind, it would be found pustulous with acne. And. there can I do little against the damnable influence of the school which has taught her that a hard-trained, clean-blooded mind is not necessary. The other girls do not go in for it. Why be a highbrow? She is so easily a leader in the school, and, as she boasts, puts it over the teachers in any way she pleases. In the days before she became aware of herself it used to be hard to get her to brush her teeth. ‘To-day I presume that her worthy preceptresses would expel her if she did not use the latest dentifrice twice a day. But they are quite willing to let her mind become overlaid with foul scum for want of systematic brushing up. “Dynamite for that institution and all like it! Nothing else would serve. With all your luxuriousness, Mona, your love of excitement, your carpe diem philosophy of life (Pat, who has ‘taken? Latin, does not know what carpe diem signifies), your eagerness for the immediate satisfactions of the moment, you never Ict your brain
