at the back of her mind the thoroughly female conviction that the best way to soothe a troubled mind is to put on comfortable shoes. - Shirley Jackson

No, she thought, you are not going to catch me so cheaply; I do not understand words and will not accept them in trade for my feelings; this man is a parrot. I will tell him that I can never understand such a thing, that maudlin self-pity does not move directly at my heart; I will not make a fool of myself by encouraging him to mock me. “I understand, yes,” she said.

"Yes,” he said. “I never had a mother, as I told you. Now I find that everyone else has had something that I missed.” He smiled at her. “I am entirely selfish,” he said ruefully, “and always hoping that someone will tell me to behave, someone will make herself responsible for me and make me be grown-up."
He is altogether selfish, she thought in some surprise, the only man I have ever sat and talked to alone, and I am impatient; he is simply not very interesting. "Why don’t you grow up by yourself?” she asked him, and wondered how many people — how many women — had already asked him that."

Elizabeth, Beth, Betsy, and Bess, they all went together to find a bird's nest...