But there was no one in Chayford more deeply interested in Paul's love-affair than Martha.
"Well, to be sure, Miss Joanna," she said one day; "it seems only yesterday that I whipped Master Paul for flying into a passion and kicking Mrs. Martin's cook, because she passed the remark that you were the ugliest little girl she'd ever set eyes on; and now he is old enough to be taking to himself a wife. Time does fly, and no mistake!"
Joanna sighed. She was a good woman, and unselfish, but it is "a bitter thing to look into happiness through another man's eyes". "Isabel Carnaby is a lucky girl," she remarked; "for I am sure Paul is a man who will make any woman happy."
Martha shook her head. "Don't be too sure of anything about a man, miss—not even if it is our Paul. They are queer creatures, even the best of them!"
"You are always hard on men, Martha."
"So I am, miss, they are such wild, feckless folks. First in a tantrum about one thing, and then about another, till there is no pleasing them; and they are no use—and far less ornament—as far as I can see."
"You don't understand how to manage them, I am afraid," laughed Joanna.
"Not I, my dear. The Lord Who made them may understand them, but I don't; for if I'd had the making of them, they'd have been made after a different pattern, I can tell you."
"But you must not say all this to Miss Carnaby," warned the wise Joanna.
"Of course not, miss; I know well enough what to say to folks that are courting. Now there was my niece, Eunice Tozer; she got engaged to a young man in her father's shop—and a sore disappointment it was to them all, herself included, that she hadn't done better."