“Well, then, speak for yourself. Never mind other people’s case.”
“What I mean,” said Margaret, with grave simplicity, “is, that all depends upon the person whose regard is to be won. There are silly girls, and weak women, who, liking mysteries in other affairs, are best pleased to be wooed with small artifices;—with having their vanity and their curiosity piqued with sly compliments—”
“Sly compliments! What an expression!”
“Such women agree, as a matter of course, in the old notion,—suitable enough five centuries ago,—that the life of courtship should be as unlike as possible to married life. But I certainly think those much the wisest and the happiest, who look upon the whole affair as the solemn matter that it really is, and who desire to be treated, from the beginning, with the sincerity and seriousness which they will require after they are married.”
“If the same simplicity and seriousness were common in this as are required in other grave transactions,” said Hester, “there would be less of the treachery, delusion, and heart-breaking, which lie heavy upon the souls of many a man and many a woman.”
Mr Enderby, happening to be looking out of the window here, as if for something to say, caught the eye of his sister, who was walking in her garden. She beckoned to him, but he took no notice, not desiring to be disturbed at present. Turning again to Margaret, he said:
“But you would destroy all the graces of courtship: you would—”
“Nay,” said Hester, “what is so graceful as the simplicity of entire mutual trust?—the more entire the more graceful.”
“I wish you had left out the word ‘trust.’ You have spoiled something that I was going on to say about the simplicity of drawing lots like the Moravians,—the most sincere courtship of all: but that word ‘trust’ puts my illustration aside. You need not protest. I assure you I am not so dull as not to understand that you think love necessary to the wooing which seems graceful in your eyes;—Oh, yes: love, and mutual knowledge, and mutual reverence, and perfect trust! Oh, yes, I understand it all.”
“Philip!” cried a soft, sentimental voice under the window: