"A solitary melody, praising without an upholding harmony, at best, Mary!"
"And what should I have been, Joseph? An inarticulate harmony—sweetly mumbling, with never a thread of soaring song!"
A pause followed.
"I shall be rather shy of your father, Mary," said Joseph. "Perhaps he won't be content with me."
"Even if you weren't what you are, my father would love you because I love you. But I know my father as well as I know you; and I know you are just the man it must make him happy afresh, even in heaven, to think of his Mary marrying. You two can hardly be of two minds in anything!"
"That was a curious speech of Letty's yesterday! You heard her say, did you not, that, if everybody was to be so very good in heaven, she was afraid it would be rather dull?"
"We mustn't make too much of what Letty says, either when she's merry or when she's miserable. She speaks both times only out of half-way down."
"Yes, yes! I wasn't meaning to find any fault with her; I was only wishing to hear what you would say. For nobody can make a story without somebody wicked enough to set things wrong in it, and then all the work lies in setting them right again, and, as soon as they are set right, then the story stops."
"There's no thing of the sort in music, Joseph, and that makes one happy enough."
"Yes, there is, Mary. There's strife and difference and compensation and atonement and reconciliation."