“I take it bygones is very little use if they don't teach us something more than to grieve over 'em; and, what's more, Layton,—it sounds harsh to say it,—but grief, when it's long persisted in, is downright selfishness, and nothing else.”
Layton slipped his arm within the other's to move away, but as he did so he turned one last look towards the little garden.
“I see it all now,” said Quackinboss, as they walked along; “you've been and met a sweetheart down here once on a time, that's it. She's been what they call cruel, or she's broke her word to you. Well, I don't suppose there's one man livin'—of what might be called real men—as has n't had something of the same experience. Some has it early, some late, but it's like the measles, it pushes you main hard if you don't take it when you 're young. There's no bending an old bough,—you must break it.”
There was a deep tone of melancholy in the way the last words were uttered that made Layton feel his companion was speaking from the heart.
“But it's all our own fault,” broke in Quackinboss, quickly; “it all comes of the way we treat 'em.”
“How do you mean?” asked Layton, eagerly.
“I mean,” said the other, resolutely, “we treat 'em as reasonable beings, and they ain't. No, sir, women is like Red-men; they ain't to be persuaded, or argued with; they 're to be told what is right for 'em, and good for 'em, and that's all. What does all your courting and coaxing a gal, but make her think herself something better than all creation? Why, you keep a-tellin' her so all day, and she begins to believe it at last. Now, how much better and fairer to say to her, 'Here's how it is, miss, you 've got to marry me, that's how it's fixed.' She 'll understand that.”
“But if she says, 'No, I won't'?”
“No, no,” said Quackinboss, with a half-bitter smile, “she 'll never say that to the man as knows how to tell her his mind. And as for that courtship, it's all a mistake. Why, women won't confess they like a man, just to keep the game a-movin'. I'm blest if they don't like it better than marriage.”
Layton gave a faint smile, but, faint as it was, Quackinboss perceived it, and said,—