“Yes, foolish,” repeated Maimie. “Just think of our ages—eighteen and seventeen. It is too absurd. There are all sorts of things I want to do and to learn before I even think of marrying.”
“I could never advise an early marriage upon poor means,” I said, speaking out of sad experience.
“No, indeed. And why should I? I am so happy as things are. I do wish Cress had let me alone. Cress, of all people! Of course I like him—as a boy, but that is all. I think a girl at seventeen is much older than a boy at eighteen or nineteen. And if I were to marry I must have somebody to look up to,—not a mere boy. Besides, they are both much too young to know their minds yet. Either of them might like me well enough now, and yet not care for me at all a few years hence. Do you think I did rightly?”
“Quite rightly,” I said. “Feeling as you do, I don’t see what other answer was possible.”
“Only they are your boys and I can’t bear to give pain to anybody belonging to you. But it always seems to me as if marriage were such a very solemn thing. To promise always to love and obey another, always to live with him, always to honour him and put him first,—oh, I couldn’t, unless I felt so very very sure of what he was. I should want such a good, good man, and so kind and pleasant,—somebody whom I could really love better than all the world beside. And, of course, it would have to be somebody I could look up to,—somebody cleverer and wiser than myself.”
Poor Jack!
“I don’t mean that I ever have thought very much about it,” she pursued. “Only, of course, I know the sort of people I like. Cress would never never do. He is kind to me, but he thinks much too much about his food, and his comforts, and having his own way. O no; I couldn’t be the wife of a person like Cress. I shouldn’t be able to look up to him.”
“You could look up to Jack more than to Cress,” I ventured to suggest.
“Yes,—perhaps. He is strong, and always kind. O yes, one does respect Jack’s strength, and the use he makes of it. Poor Jack is really good, I am sure; only he is rather slow over books. I can do a long sum in a quarter the time he takes.”
Alas, it was too true. And Maimie was devoted to books, and thought so much of knowledge.