"Jack! heaven and earth, Sophia! what has Jack to do with it?"
"Nothing, of course, only you know, or at any rate you might have seen that he--well, that he may object."
Mr. Woodward's face passed from sheer amazement to that peculiar expression of virtuous indignation which so many English fathers reserve for those who, without a nomination, have the temerity to admire their daughters.
"Jack! that boy Jack?"
"He is older than Alice, my dear," put in his wife, with meek obstinacy. She, on the contrary, was smiling, for, no matter how ineligible the victim, a scalp is always a scalp to a mother; and Jack was not ineligible. On the contrary, he was the head of the soap-boiling business, now that her husband had received a consideration for his interest, and retired into the more genteel trade of blowing soap bubbles on 'Change.
"Pooh!" retorted Mr. Woodward, angrily, "if he is troublesome send him to me, I'll settle him. The lad must marry position, like Alice." He paused, and his manner changed. "You don't, of course, mamma, insinuate that--that Alice--that your daughter has been foolish enough----"
Mrs. Woodward rose with dignity, and gave the cat its bread and milk. "My daughter is a dear, good, sensible girl, Mr. Woodward; but that doesn't alter the fact that your nephew may be foolish. I consider it extremely likely that he may be; it runs in the family."
Mr. Woodward took up the share list again, using it--after the manner of his kind when in domestic difficulties--as a shield, and his wife put a fresh lump of sugar in the canary's cage, saw to its seed and water, and left the room placidly. The bird was her bird, the cat her cat, and therefore she did her duty by them. In the same conscientious spirit she interviewed the housekeeper and ordered a very good dinner for her husband because he was her husband. Some people have the knack of getting a vast deal of purely selfish satisfaction out of their own virtues. Finally, she went into the morning-room, and began to think over the best way of doing her duty by her daughter also; for there was this difficulty in the way, here, that she and Alice were too much alike for sympathy. They found each other out continually, and, what is more, placidly disapproved of the various little weaknesses they shared in common. It is this inevitable likeness which is really at the bottom of that state of affairs, which is expressed in the feminine phrase, "they don't get on at home, somehow." But Alice was not a revolting daughter. Apart from other considerations, she would have thought it vulgar not to behave nicely to her parents, while Mrs. Woodward herself would have felt her complacent self-respect endangered if she had not had a high estimate of her own child; and Alice was, in this aspect, a far easier subject than her brother Sam, who, to tell truth, gave even his mother a few qualms in regard to his personal appearance.
But Alice was perfect in that respect, simply perfect. Not too pronouncedly pretty; not the sort of girl whose photograph would be put up surreptitiously in the shop windows, but really quite unexceptionable as she came in to her mother's room and stood at the window in her trim habit waiting for the horses to come round. Then she turned to her mother composedly.
"Father had a letter from Captain Macleod this morning, hadn't he? When does he expect us?"