"Why not?" asked Margaret. "Nothing would tend to civilize him so much as a wife and children, if only we can find some good and nice village girl whom he could love, and who would consent to marry him. But no lady would become his wife."
"Of course not," assented Laura; "but what, then, is to become of poor Philip?"
"Philip wants to become a surgeon," said Margaret, smiling, "and I am willing, even glad; but Sidney hesitates. I do not want my boy drowned in commercial cares, and dealing chiefly with money all his life, as Sidney has been. I do not think money worth the sacrifice. I cannot help believing that our Lord meant what He said: 'How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God!' It is true. Tell me, Sidney, is it not true? I shall be glad to have Philip out of the race for wealth. They will not be poor—Laura; my boy and your girl. They will have enough to secure everything worth having—everything that tends to health and culture and rational pleasure. They will only have to do without superfluities."
"Philip a surgeon!" exclaimed Laura; "not even a clergyman to take the family living!"
"That would be impossible," replied Margaret; "he feels no call for it, and he could not go into the Church for the sake of the family living."
"That would be a sin against God," said George; "next to the unpardonable sin, if it be not that sin itself. Let Philip become a surgeon; my Phyllis will love him as much as if he was the owner of Brackenburn."
But there were at least two persons there who doubted it, and with good reasons. A smile that had grown rare on Sidney's face lit it up for a moment, as the thought flashed across him that Philip would soon see the real nature of the wife he had chosen, and that Dorothy would also appear to him in her true light. Laura inwardly vowed that neither persuasion nor authority on her husband's part should keep Phyllis bound to a man who entered the insignificant career of a surgeon. It would have been a knotty question whether Phyllis could have married him, even if he had entered into partnership with his successful father; but she should never become the wife of a professional man.
And Martin? It was possible that Sidney and Margaret were exaggerating his deficiencies. Laura felt no doubt that they painted him worse than he was; it was Margaret's habit to overstate any opinion she formed. If he was only a boor, why could not Phyllis civilize him? She might, in any case, keep her boorish husband in the background and still enjoy the distinction of being Mrs. Martin of Brackenburn. Before she bade them good-night she had constructed for herself a tolerable image of Martin, which might be quite easily tolerated by a girl like Phyllis. She might still live to see her the wife of Sidney's eldest son.