Gender Readings. Top Ten. Ренц Т.Г - 36 стр.

      “Gwen, don’t be silly.”
      Often Trudy would question Gwen about Richard and his mother.
      “Are they well off? Is she a well-bred woman? What’s the house
like? How long have you known Richard? Why hasn’t he married
before? The mother, is she —”
      “Lucy is a marvel in her way,” Gwen said.
      “Oh, do you call her Lucy? You must know her awfully well.”
      “I’m quite,” said Gwen, “a member of the family in my way.”
      “Richard has often told me that. Do you go there every Sunday?”
      “Most Sundays,” Gwen said. “It is often very amusing, and one
sometimes sees a fresh face.”
      “Why,” Trudy said, as the summer passed and she had already
been away for several weekends with Richard, “doesn’t he ask me to
meet his mother? If my mother were alive and living in London I
know I would have asked him home to meet her.”
      Trudy threw out hints to Richard. “How I wish you could meet
my father. You simply must come up to Leicester in the Christmas
holidays and stay with him. He’s rather tied up in Leicester and
never leaves it. He’s an insurance manager. The successful kind.”
      “I can’t very well leave Mother at Christmas,” Richard said,
“but I’d love to meet your father some other time.” His tan had
worn off, and Trudy thought him more distinguished and at the same
time more unattainable than ever.
      “I think it only right,” Trudy said in her young young way,
“that one should introduce the man one loves to one’s parents” — for
it was agreed between them that they were in love.
      But still, by the end of October, Richard had not asked her to
meet his mother.
      “Does it matter all that much?” Gwen said.
      “Well, it would be a definite step forward,” Trudy said. “We
can’t go on being just friends like this. I’d like to know where I stand
with him. After all, we’re in love and we’re both free. Do you know,
I’m beginning to think he hasn’t any serious intentions after all. But if
he asked me to meet his mother it would be a sort of sign, wouldn’t it?”
      “It certainly would,” Gwen said.
      “I don’t even feel I can ring him up at home until I’ve met his
mother. I’d feel shy of talking to her on the phone. I must meet her.
It’s becoming a sort of obsession.”


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