"I don't know as I understand this mighty thing that you young folk call 'falling in love,'" said mother. "I was quite sure what I was about when I married your father."
"Well, now, mother, I don't see how you can have been quite sure beforehand," argued I, obstinately. "You have been lucky, that's all."
"Nay, it's not all luck," said mother. "It isn't all plain sailing over fifty or sixty years of rubbing up and down; and they'd best have something stouter than a mere fancy to stand upon who want to make a good job of it."
"I don't see what they are to have stouter than love to stand upon," said I. "And I always thought love was a thing that came whether you would or not, and had nothing to do with the merits of people."
It was all a great puzzle. Did mother make too little of love, and did I make too much?
"That's not love," said mother; "that's a fancy. I misdoubt people who undertake to show patience and steadiness in one thing, before they have learned it in anything else."
"What has Frank Forrester done, I should like to know?" asked I, feeling that she was too hard on him.
"Nothing, my dear," answered mother, laconically.
And I sighed. It was very evident there would be no convincing mother, and that if there was to be any relaxation in the hardness of the verdict for Joyce, it must come through father, and not through her.
She rose and moved away, for the light had waned, and we could not see to work.