"Haven't you any sense of the rigour of your office?" she asked. "Is that what his mother has sent him out to you for: that you shall find him the first wife you can pick up, that you shall let him put his head into the noose the day after his arrival?"
"Heaven forbid I should do anything of the kind! I know moreover that his mother doesn't want him to marry young. She holds it the worst of mistakes, she feels that at that age a man never really chooses. He doesn't choose till he has lived a while, till he has looked about and compared."
"And what do you think then yourself?"
"I should like to say I regard the fact of falling in love, at whatever age, as in itself an act of selection. But my being as I am at this time of day would contradict me too much."
"Well then, you're too primitive. You ought to leave this place tomorrow."
"So as not to see Archie fall—?"
"You ought to fish him out now—from where he HAS fallen—and take him straight away."
I wondered a little. "Do you think he's in very far?"
"If I were his mother I know what I should think. I can put myself in her place—I'm not narrow-minded. I know perfectly well how she must regard such a question."
"And don't you know," I returned, "that in America that's not thought important—the way the mother regards it?"