“That horrid old thing! Why, he is nothing but a dancer. You don’t mean to say that I must marry him?” and Julia, for the first time since her childhood, and without in the least knowing why, burst into a storm of tears.
“I won’t marry him,” she sobbed. “I won’t.”
Mrs. Edis waited until she was calm, then, having disposed of a square of tissue as old, relatively, as her own, continued, “It is I that should weep, for I am to lose you and it will be very lonely here. But that is neither here nor there. When the time comes we all fulfil our destiny. Your time has come to marry, and take your first step upon the brilliant career which awaits you.”
“Please wait till the next squadron,” sobbed Julia. “The planets may have made a mistake —”
This remark was unworthy of notice.
“I hate the planets.”
Mrs. Edis applied a sharp knife and an upright indomitable fork to another fragment of Abraham.
Julia, feeling no match for the combined forces of the heavens and her mother, dried her eyes.
“Has he a castle?”
“He will have.”