Actually, now that I was older and my loveliness more obvious, my mother’s criticism of the pride I took in myself infuriated me. Why would she want to rein in such beauty anyway? Most mothers would be proud, beaming and gathering compliments like a cotton picker.

“Has your mother told you most of this?” Edna asked. “Is that where you learned about it?”

“My mother?” I laughed. “Hardly. It would be too shocking. She would have heart failure, and I would be accused of matricide.”

I wouldn’t tell them, but in the deepest, darkest, and most secret chambers of my heart, I couldn’t help but harbor the suspicion that my mother was simply jealous of me and used her heavy, thorny golden rules of humility to keep me from bursting out of the background in any room or place we had entered together. She knew I would quickly seize all the male attention, not that my mother was looking for any. She was simply drowned in my shadow and practically ignored when she brought me along.

Of course, she wasn’t wrong to accuse me of being too forward. I sought to command every smile and all the praise the men around me could afford before their own wives turned their eyes into red-hot embers of disapproval, disapproval that would be directed at my mother for raising such a vamp. That was what it really was for her anyway: concern about her precious reputation.

“My mother would be shocked, too, if she found out we were even discussing such things,” Agnes said. “She would forbid me from spending any time with you, any of you.”

“Well, don’t say anything,” Edna warned. “We pledged that everything we tell each other is sacred, didn’t we?”

“I won’t say anything.” She looked more frightened. “My mother would have my father take the strap to me.”

“Mothers often forget what they were like when they were our age,” I said. I looked back at my house and then leaned toward them to impart a great secret, and the three leaned toward me. “Or they are afraid to confess it. Oh, they might give you a little advice when some proper gentleman asks permission to propose marriage, but until then . . .” I sighed and sat back. “Until then, we’re really on our own, aren’t we? We have to know how far we can go and what we can do and not do. My best advice is, nibble but don’t bite.”

“What?” Edna said. “Nibble what?”

“Don’t you have any imagination, Edna? Just dare yourself to think about it.”

Agnes and Edna stared. They looked quite frightened. I smiled at Daisy.

“Daisy and I know how to do that, don’t we, Daisy? We dare ourselves to think about it.”

“Yes, but my guess is you’ll be the first who attracts a proper marriage proposal, whether your mother likes to admit it or not.”