"And you are contented?"
"Well, no; I can't say that I am contented. I hardly think that anybody ought to be contented. Should my mother die and Dorothy remain with my aunt, or get married, I should be utterly alone in the world. Providence, or whatever you call it, has made me a lady after a fashion, so that I can't live with the ploughmen's wives, and at the same time has so used me in other respects, that I can't live with anybody else."
"Why should not you get married, as well as Dorothy?"
"Who would have me? And if I had a husband I should want a good one,—a man with a head on his shoulders, and a heart. Even if I were young and good-looking, or rich, I doubt whether I could please myself. As it is I am as likely to be taken bodily to heaven, as to become any man's wife."
"I suppose most women think so of themselves at some time, and yet they are married."
"I am not fit to marry. I am often cross, and I like my own way, and I have a distaste for men. I never in my life saw a man whom I wished even to make my intimate friend. I should think any man an idiot who began to make soft speeches to me, and I should tell him so."
"Ah; you might find it different when he went on with it."
"But I think," said Priscilla, "that when a woman is married there is nothing to which she should not submit on behalf of her husband."
"You mean that for me."
"Of course I mean it for you. How should I not be thinking of you, living as you are under the same roof with us? And I am thinking of Louey." Louey was the baby. "What are you to do when after a year or two his father shall send for him to have him under his own care?"