Which class of women do you like best, those who seem younger, or those who seem older than they are ?' 'Off-hand I should be inclined to say those who seem older.' So it was not Elfride's class.
'But it is well known,' she said eagerly, and there was something touching in the artless anxiety to be thought much of which she revealed by her words, 'that the slower a nature is to develop, the richer the nature.

Youths and girls who are men and women before they come of age are nobodies by the time that backward people have shown their full compass.' 'Yes,' said Knight thoughtfully.

'There is really something in that remark.

But at the risk of offence I must remind you that you there take it for granted that the woman behind her time at a given age has not reached the end of her tether.

Her backwardness may be not because she is slow to develop, but because she soon exhausted her capacity for developing.' Elfride looked disappointed.