"Oh, she knows. There, you two boys, run off. I want to talk to her and I don't want you catching gabble seed."
"I hoped he'd wait for you, he would have been young enough then, and a chit like you don't know her mind, though many a girl has been married at fifteen. Sophie Piaget is a nice enough girl, industrious and all that, but he might have looked higher. I don't quite like the French of it, and the Catholic, though I'm not bigoted. I never supposed you were helping things along, or I'd put my finger in the pie sooner."
Had I helped it along? I had a guilty feeling.
"Father wouldn't hear to my being engaged or having a real lover," I said with some dignity. "And—I don't want one, I don't care about being married."
"You'll sing another tune presently. Though after all," in a softer tone, "there is plenty of time."
CHAPTER XII
NOT MERRY, BUT WEDDING BELLS.
Mrs. Hayne did not feel comfortable over Homer's engagement. It was a full fortnight before she could make a formal call on Mrs. Piaget. She had been there on errands, and Sophie and I were often at the Haynes'. But she stopped for me one day, "since it had to be done," she said, and we walked down together. She was not at her best, though she had on her Sunday clothes. Perhaps she would have felt more at ease in her every-day ones. She was generally so cordial and heartsome that I noticed and felt sorry for the stiffness.
Of course she said some pleasant things—that she knew Sophie would make a good, industrious wife, and that was what young men needed. She had no patience with flyaways, and girls who were too good to work, who were taking up the new ideas that you must sit in the parlor and play on the piano, and have lace undersleeves dangling about your wrists, and a tail to your frock to sweep up the dirt everywhere. Clothes, she took it, were made for use and comfort.
Women were wearing very full skirts, and all around the back they "dipped" and had to be held up in the streets. Sleeves were wide and flowing with lace or fine muslin ruffles inside. Some had an edge of needlework, but if that came from the convents in Canada it was costly, and the younger girls were doing it for themselves. They took their work along when they went to make calls, and calls then were an hour or so long between friends, and you "laid off your things."