"But, my good Ponty, the cases are not parallel," I said, with much truth; "in your story it was the wife's sister and not the husband's, which makes all the difference."
"It doesn't matter on which side the sister was: it is the principle of having relations to live with newly-married people that I don't approve of. Married folks are best left to themselves till the children come."
"But our marriage is an exceptional one," I urged.
"All marriages are exceptional to the bride and bridegroom," replied Ponty, "just as all children are exceptional to their own parents. No, Master Reggie, mark my words, when a man and a woman join hands at the altar, they don't reckon to be starting a game of 'Oranges and Lemons,' with their relations hanging on to them behind and pulling them apart. And that's what married life comes to, if the relations on either side live with the parties concerned."
"You are talking about things you don't in the least understand."
But Ponty took as little notice of me as she used to take when I was a child of six. It was never very wise of me to be dignified with Ponty. "I understand that it's a big job anyway for a husband and wife to shake down together when first they are married, Master Reggie, and it makes the job ten times bigger when their relations begin helping them. It's a thing they can only do when they are left to their own two selves."
I still tried to be patient, though I was fully alive to my old nurse's narrowness and ignorance. How little she grasped the true relationship between Fay and Annabel! "Your plan may be all very well when a man and his wife are about the same age, Ponty; there is a freemasonry in youth which unaided must bring them a complete understanding of each other. But what you call the shaking down becomes much more difficult when there is nearly a quarter of a century between the two."
"Then the more difficult it is, Master Reggie, the less they'll want anybody to help them. You may take my word for that. And if you follow my advice you won't allow Miss Annabel—nor Mr. Wildacre neither, one side being as bad as the other—to help you and Miss Fay to shake down together. You'll do the shaking down yourselves or else remain unshook. I remember there was a man in Poppenhall who used to say as there was nobody as fermented a quarrel like the peacemakers, and the same holds good with relatives in the case of marriage."
I did not want to lose my temper with my old nurse, so I went out of the room. But I was dreadfully disappointed in Ponty. I thought she would have known better.