"Of course I miss the dear children, but I'm so thankful that they are happy."
"I wish Jenny would come back home to stay with you."
"She would if I asked her, Susan"—her face showed her pleasure at the thought of Jenny's willingness for the sacrifice—"but I wouldn't have her do it for the world. She's so different from Lucy, who was quite happy as long as she could have attention and go to parties. Of course, it seems to me more natural for a girl to be like that, especially a Southern girl, but Jenny says that she is obliged to have something to think about besides men. I wonder what my dear father would have thought of her?"
"She'll take you by surprise some day, and marry as suddenly as Lucy did."
"That's what Oliver says, but Miss Priscilla is sure she'll be an old maid, because she's so fastidious. It's funny how much more women exact of men now than they used to. Don't you remember what a heroine the women of Miss Priscilla's generation thought Mrs. Tom Peachey was because she supported Major Peachey by taking boarders while he just drank himself into his grave? Well, somebody mentioned that to Jenny the other day and she said it was 'disgusting.'"
"I always thought so," said Susan, "but, Jinny, I'm more interested in you than I am in Mrs. Peachey. What are you going to do with yourself?" Almost unconsciously both had eliminated Oliver as the dominant figure in Virginia's future.
"I don't know, dear. I wish my children were as young as yours. Bessie is just six, isn't she?"
"You ought to have had a dozen children. Didn't you realize that Nature intended you to do it?"
"I know"—a pensive look came into her face—"but we were very poor, and after the three came so quickly, and the little one that I lost, Oliver felt that we could not afford to have any others. I've so often thought that I was never really happy except when I had a baby in my arms."
"It's a devilish trick of Nature's that she makes them stop coming at the very time that you want them most. Forty-five is not much more than half a lifetime, Jinny."