Blanche smelt at her flowers, coloured, laughed, and ended by saying lightly, “I scantly know, Aunt.”
“Then the sooner thou callest them to order, the better. She must needs be an idle jade that wits not whereof she thinketh.”
“Well, if you must needs know, Aunt Rachel,” said Blanche, laughing again, and just a trifle saucily, “I thought about—being wed.”
“Fie for shame!” was the prompt comment on this confession. “What hast thou to do withal, till thy father and mother bid thee?”
“Why, that is even what I thought, Aunt Rachel,” said Blanche coolly, “and I would I had more to do withal. I would fain choose mine own servant.” (Suitor.)
“Thou!—Poor babe!” was the contemptuous rejoinder.
“Well, Aunt Rachel, you wot a woman must be wed.”
“That’s a man’s notion!” said Rachel in her severest manner. “Blanche, I do marvel greatly that thou hast not more womanfulness than so. A woman must be wed, quotha! Who saith it? Some selfish man, I warrant, that thought women were create into the world for none other cause but to be his serving-maids!”
“I am sure I know not wherefore we were create,” muttered Blanche, loud enough for her sisters to hear but not her Aunt.
Rachel stopped her carding. She saw a first-rate opening for a lecture, and on her own special pet topic.