Rivers of China

‘Oh dear,’ she said, ‘I do wish I hadn’t married. I wish I’d been an explorer.’ And then she said dreamily, ‘The Rivers of China, for instance.’

‘But what do you know about the rivers of China, darling,’ I said. For Mother knew no geography whatever; she knew less than a child of ten.

‘Nothing,’ she agreed. ‘But I can feel the kind of hat I should wear.’

Katherine Mansfield
Journal
27^th December 1920