"Ida, we're engaged, Harry and I," I said.
"So I thought," she said, looking at us kindly and stretching out both hands.
I took one and he the other.
"Do you think I have any chance with your parents?" asked Harry.
"I think," said Ida, "that you will find trouble at first, but you may rely on Eva, she will never change; but we must go home."
"Yes," said I, "it would not do to introduce the matter by getting up a domestic alarm and sending a party to drag the lake for us; we must drive home in a peaceable, orderly manner," and so, it being agreed among us that I should try my diplomatic powers on mamma first, and Harry should speak to papa afterward, we drove home.
Well, now Belle, it is all over—the mystery I mean; and the struggle with the powers, that bids to begin. How odd it is that marriage, which is a thing of all others most personal and individual, is a thing where all your friends want you to act to please them!
Mamma probably in her day felt toward papa just as I feel, but I am sure she will be drowned in despair that I cannot see Wat Sydney with her eyes, and that I do choose to see Harry with mine. But it isn't mamma that is to live with him, it is I; it is my fearful venture for life, not hers. I am to give the right to have and to hold me till life's end. When I think of that I wonder I am not afraid to risk it with any man, but with him I am not. I know him so intimately and trust him so entirely.
What a laugh I gave him last night, telling him how foolishly he had acted; he likes to have me take him off, and seemed perfectly astonished that I had had the perspicuity to read his feelings. These men, my dear, have a kind of innocent stupidity in matters of this kind that is refreshing!
Well, if I am not mistaken, there was one blissful individual sent home in New York last night, notwithstanding the terrors of the 'stern parents,' that are yet to be encountered.