"She never took Him in with that, I'll be bound," murmured Martha, with an ominous shake of the head; "but it was just like her to try it on."
"I suppose we ought not to mind whether we are rich or poor, or handsome or plain," mused Joanna aloud; "for this life is, after all, only an anteroom to the next one. Our happiness or unhappiness here is really a question of no moment; what really matters is whether we are using our happiness or unhappiness as a fit preparation for the life to come."
"Quite true, my dear," commented Martha; "as long as sick folk get well, it doesn't signify to them whether they are cured by sweet syrups or by bitter drugs. It is the cure that matters, not the medicine."
Joanna nodded her head approvingly: Martha's uncompromising sense of justice always appealed to her.
"Them as think too much of this present life and all its vanities," continued Martha, "remind me of my poor father, the first time he travelled by rail. It was to see his sister who lived at Folwich. 'Now, Joshua,' says mother to him, 'whatever you do, don't sit down on them comfortable seats and fall asleep, but remember that you are a stranger and a sojourner.' 'All right, missis,' says father; and then—like a man—did exactly the opposite to what he'd been told. Oh! they are tiresome creatures, men are. If you look after their health, they say you are fussy; and if you don't, they are all dead corpses. Eh! but there is no peace for a married woman, save in the grave; and not even there, I doubt, unless he has been took first, and so she knows he is out of harm's way."
"Then don't you think that men are able to take care of themselves?" asked Joanna.
"My conscience alive, miss! You, who have got a father of your own, to ask such a question as that! Still there is some excuse for you, seeing that your father is a minister, and so not quite like other men. But even a call to the ministry don't make a man equal to a woman, to my thinking; though it is better than nothing, as you may say."
"What happened to your father on his first journey? That is what you were telling me."
"So I was, miss, so I was. Well, as I was saying, mother told father not to make himself too comfortable on his journey, or worse would come of it. She owned afterwards that she had been foolish not to see that forbidding a thing was just suggesting to him to do it, and putting fresh mischief into his head; for the moment she forgot she was speaking to a man, and treated him as a reasonable being—which she ought to have known better, being a married woman."
"Then did he disobey her?" inquired Joanna.