"I have no doubt your cousin is a most estimable girl," Madame Duncan answered, with dignity, "but I have never yet felt the need of any close companion save my son. You, having no children, are excusable for not understanding my feelings, now when another claims his thoughts."
"Yet the world is maintained by such occurrences," I replied. "You took some mother's son, or you would not have had your own."
With austere self-righteousness Mrs. Duncan corrected me.
"I married an orphan," she said.
"How thoughtful of you," I responded. "But you see it is not lack of thought, only an accident of fate, which has prevented my cousin from marrying an orphan. There are not enough desirable orphans to keep our young women supplied with husbands, you know."
I think Mrs. Duncan suspected me of covert sarcasm, for she changed the topic of conversation. But I heard her afterward talking to a bevy of women on the sorrow of giving up a child after having reared him to manhood's estate, and her listeners all seemed duly sympathetic.
Of course, my dear Ruth, there is an element of sadness in the happiest of marriages for the parents of children. I think it is particularly sad when a mother gives up a daughter, whose every thought she has shared, and whose every pleasure she has planned, and sees her embark upon the uncertain ocean of marriage, with a strange pilot at the helm.
The really good and loving mother endears herself to that pilot, and loves him and seeks his affection for her daughter's sake. She hides her own sorrow in her heart, and does not shadow her daughter's voyage by her repining.
The man who is worthy of a good girl's love will understand what it must mean to a mother to give her daughter to him, and he will in every way seek to recompense her for her loss, by bestowing upon her sympathy, courteous attentions, and a son's devotion.
Just so will the girl, who is worthy of being a good man's wife, seek to make his mother love her.