Mr. Proudleigh sat down again. He was sorry he had not grasped the purport of Jones’s words from the start, for it was rather embarrassing to have mentioned marriage when marriage was not immediately intended.
But Miss Proudleigh rose to the occasion. “Ef Susan are satisfied,” she said, “there is nobody to interfere. A respectable young man may not feel like marrying now, an’ yet that does not signify that he is to remain widout a partner in life. After all, who make the marriage service? Don’t it is man? Read the Bible, an’ y’u won’t find a word of it there. Isaac an’ Rebecca didn’t married in a church; an’ yet look how lovin’ them live together. I am a Christian woman, an’ I know what is right from wrong. But I don’t agree wid all those stiff-neck people who say that everybody ought to married right off. That is not a practical view.”
Mr. Proudleigh saw the golden bridge which his sister had built for him, and he went flying over it.
“That is my own opinions,” he remarked with emphasis. “When Mister Jones mention dis matter, I did thought it was funny that . . . I mean that I thought dat a young man would want to know the sort o’ female him goin’ to get married to. Before I married, I was along wid Susan’s mother for ten years. I had the twins that dead, an’ me son who is now oversea—a good buoy that. Then I married, an’ Susan was born. An’ p’rhaps I wouldn’t married at all ef the parson of de church I use to attend sometimes didn’t talk to me an’ tell me I ought to jine society an’ don’t live no more in sin. I don’t regret I are married, but I wouldn’t tell any young man to married right off if him don’t wants to.”
“That is what I say meself,” put in Catherine from the door. “If a gurl get a young man, she would be foolish to drive him away because him don’t want to married at once. After all, if him is free, she is free too.”
Now Catherine had no young man in view, so far as Miss Proudleigh was aware. And though many excellent arguments might be found to show that Susan and Jones were doing almost the right and proper thing in the circumstances existing, Miss Proudleigh felt that a stricter code of morality ought to be enforced in so far as Catherine and Eliza were concerned, at any rate until the time should come when moral theory might wisely be dispensed with on the tacit understanding of a marriage in perspective.
She pursed up her mouth. “I doesn’t thinks,” she observed, “that a young gurl should talk in that way. Susan is different. But you an’ Eliza don’t know de world yet, an’ you should be modest. When I was young, me parents wouldn’t allow me to make such a remarks.”
Catherine bridled up, Eliza tittered, Susan laughed outright.
Catherine made a peculiar noise with her mouth which is locally known as “sucking your teeth,” and which expresses both contempt and defiance. Miss Proudleigh would have volubly resented this, had not her brother interrupted her by going to the door and calling his wife.
“Mattie,” he explained, when she answered the summons, “Mister Jones is takin’ Susan as an intended. Him is a decent young gen’leman, an’ I tell him we is pleased to welcome him.”