“Mamma,” quoth Leoline, “I thought a woman must not marry her grandfather. And she called him the patriarch of her clan.”
“He is a cross old man,” added Hubert. “He said children ought not to be allowed on the esplanade, because he got into the way as I was pushing the perambulator.”
“This was the reason,” said Francis, gravely, “that she stopped me from braying at him. I shall know what people are at, when they talk of disrespect another time.”
“Don’t talk of her,” cried Conrade, flinging himself round; “women have no truth in them.”
“Except the dear, darling, delightful mammy!” And the larger proportion of boys precipitated themselves headlong upon her, so that any one but a mother would have been buffeted out of breath in their struggles for embracing ground; and even Lady Temple found it a relief when Hubert, having been squeezed out, bethought himself of extending the honourable exception to Miss Williams, and thus effected a diversion. What would have been the young gentlemen’s reception of his lordship’s previous proposal!
Yet in the fulness of her gladness the inconsistent widow, who had thought Lord Keith so much too old for herself, gave her younger friend heartfelt congratulations upon the blessing of being under fatherly direction and guidance. She was entrusted with the announcement to Rachel, who received it with a simple “Indeed!” and left her cousin unmolested in her satisfaction, having long relegated Fanny to the class of women who think having a friend about to be married the next best thing to being married themselves, no matter to whom.
“Aspirations in women are mere delusions,” was her compensating sigh to Grace. “There is no truer saying, than that a woman will receive every man.”
“I have always been glad that is aprocryphal,” said Grace, “and Eastern women have no choice.”
“Nor are Western women better than Eastern,” said Rachel. “It is all circumstances. No mental power or acuteness has in any instance that I have yet seen, been able to balance the propensity to bondage. The utmost flight is, that the attachment should not be unworthy.”
“I own that I am very much surprised,” said Grace.