"Delia Whitney was well enough for a neighbour. You have run and run there, Ben, and really never taken the trouble to look about. You are young, and hardly know what is best for you. You could have looked higher. But you've gotten in with those newspaper people; and they do drink, and are not very choice in their company."
"And lawyers drink; yet we are going to make a lawyer out of Jim. And we have known country farmers addicted to the habit. Newspaper-men are quite up to the average. But that has nothing to do with Delia."
"No, women don't so often take to drinking. But she is in it all; and I don't like such public business for a woman. A wife's place is at home; and Mrs. Whitney is a very poor housekeeper. Ben, a great deal of a man's happiness depends on the way his house is kept."
"But their house is always bright and pleasant. And think how Delia used to work in First Street. She can keep house good enough for me."
"You have always had things so neat and orderly, Ben, that you don't know how trying that sort of helter-skelter housekeeping can be. A woman can't run hither and yon, and write stories and what not; and now they are beginning to lecture and talk, and make themselves as mannish as possible! No, I don't like it. And I pity the man who has to live in that sort of neglected home. And then, Ben, come disputes and separations."
He had heard the narrow reasoning before. Mrs. Reed came into his mind. With her passion for cleanliness and order, she certainly knew nothing about a happy, comfortable home. His mother still scouted a sewing-machine. Delia had hired one with a good operator, and declared that in a week they had done up all the summer sewing. He knew his mother would say it was only half-done. To be sure, Delia's mother was a great novel-reader and had neglected her household many a time for an interesting book. But she wrote neither stories nor verses.
"Of course, you will do as you like. And you think you are the only one that will suffer. But a mother has many sorrowful hours over a son's unhappiness and discomfort."
Then she passed him, and went into the house. And, after the fashion of unreasoning women, she hurried up to her own room and cried a few bitter tears. Ben had been such a good, upright, pleasant son. He ought to have the best wife in the world, for he was easy-going and would put up with almost anything. She was disappointed.
She would have scouted the idea of being aristocratic or mercenary; yet she did want him to look higher. There had been such an attractive Hoffman cousin spending a month with Margaret, who thought Ben delightful. There were two or three girls in the neighbourhood. In fact, a young man might as well marry some one of distinction and character; Dolly and Cleanthe were none the worse for their money.
"I don't know what I can do," Ben said to Dolly, with a sigh. "Delia has a suspicion that mother is against her. I'm not in a hurry to marry; but Delia won't marry me until everybody is ready to welcome her."