"You know I mean Vivian, so what's the use o' talkin' 'bout anybody else? I seen cl'ar 'nuff, Nellie, five year ago, how things wuz goin' to be when them two growed up. It's nater, and I dunno's we kin help it, even supposin' we wuz to desire to."
A troubled look passed over Mrs. Powell's face; passed and left no trace, as a cloud passes over the sun. "Whatever is, is best," she had been saying all her life, when persons about her were complaining of fate and Providence and ill-luck. But beneath her optimism was a basis of sound judgment, and she always quietly made herself sure that nothing better was attainable before acquiescing in such arrangements as Providence allotted.
"Edgar Chamblin is jest sech a young man as I'd like to see Mandy marry," she observed placidly. "I've nothin' ag'in Vivian—you know I've always been as fond of him as if he wuz my own—but put fire and tow together! Now, Edgar's one of the kind that'd let Mandy do jest what she pleased. He's easy-goin'. Not but what he's sensible too, and steady. I'd be proud to hev Mandy so well suited in a husband as Ed'd suit her."
"I should think you'd know better'n to pick out who Mandy's goin' to marry," said Vivian's mother. "And I ain't so shore as it's the best thing fur a woman to have a husband give in to her every whip-stitch. Probably you dunno what it is to have a shiftless, no-account, no-back-bone sort o' creetur 'round under foot—"
"Lord knows, all I want's my child's happiness," sighed good Mrs. Powell. "If she and Vivian air fond o' one another, I'm not the one to oppose 'em. But I can't say now as I want it so. It stands to reason two black-eyed, high-strung people, both proud as Lucifer, must expect to have a stormy life together. Why, it'd make me tremble—the idee of 'em goin' away on a weddin' tour!"
"Vivian's a good boy, Nellie," answered his mother in a tone that trembled a little. "You know, yourself, he's a gentleman. No woman need be afeard of a man if he's a gentleman."
"My dear, the Major wuz a gentleman; no man more so. But I dunno what'd happened if I hadn't known how to manage him. You've either got to manage a man or be managed, and though there air women that need managin', and some that like it, I've never seen the man yet that's fit to be the head o' woman. I ain't sayin' they don't exist. I haven't been about much. But my mother had. She'd been everywhere. Her father was Commander in the Navy, as you know, and she said to me once: 'Nellie, I never yet see the man that was good enough for a good woman.' I don't go as fur as that. Ma was ruther high in her notions. But on the other hand it'd go mighty hard with me to have to stand by and see a man that married Mandy with his hand on top."
"Seems to me you needn't be afeard o' that if she has Vivian. It's been all along with them two that if one wuz ahead one day, t'other was shore to git ahead the next. You recollect the old saying: 'Pull Dick, pull deevil,' I reckon, Nellie?"