“What a child!” she said, and bent forward and kissed Prudence on the cheek.
She was, nor did she hide it altogether successfully, a little disappointed. Edward had prepared her for a young daughter-in-law, but she had not expected to see any one quite so youthful in appearance. Comparing them as they stood side by side, the disparity in age struck her unpleasantly.
“My dear,” she said, “I had not realised you were so young.”
“I don’t think I realised it myself,” Prudence returned, feeling her courage oozing away before the hard scrutiny of those critical eyes, “until to-day. I’ve an unfledged feeling since leaving home. But I’m twenty.”
Twenty! And the man who proposed to make her his wife might, had circumstances so ordained it, have been her father.
“She’ll grow up, mother,” Mr Morgan observed, and pressed the girl’s arm reassuringly. “I must try to equalise matters by growing younger myself.”
But the old lady was not encouraging.
“You won’t succeed, Edward. It’s like planting a bulb the wrong way in the soil; it grows against nature downwards, curves about, and works its way to the surface, crooked. Prudence will have to grow to you; you can’t go backwards.”
He reddened and laughed a little constrainedly.
“I feel as young as I did at twenty,” he said. “Prudence will help to rejuvenate me. I refuse to be discouraged.”