At this moment a double laugh came down the stair. And he, down there, answered it. So that you will understand that John Estover, Friend and Overseer, and John Estover, Husband, were very different individuals.
Upstairs it was hard to distinguish one from the other of these two pretty women—which was daughter, which mother—for they were locked in a laughing, weeping embrace, and the one was showing the other a long-necked, old-fashioned bottle, labelled
“PATCHOULY.”
Well, she was like her mother, and so, when I describe the one, you will see the other. The daintiest of retroussé noses, eyes entirely too large for her face, a mouth that would smile her very thoughts—and sometimes, tell them—a curiously deep dimple in her chin. But for her attire no one would have thought her a subdued Quaker. Yet upon that even the little mother insisted.
“First,” she said, “your father wishes it. Second, you will never be so pretty in anything else. Dearie, you make me think of a blush rose hidden in the heart of a lily every time I look into your bonnet. Think what a surprise that will be to your prince that day he comes! To look into the prim, gray bonnet and find—YOU!”
And she kissed what she found there.
“And, oh, my beloved, there are ways and ways! Men must be managed and women must be pretty—and both are possible—even in Quaker garments.”
“My beloved!” cried the one.
“My sweet Marian!” responded the other.
Whereby you will know what even John Estover did not know concerning his wife and child—that they had changed the fearful name he had chosen, to the next best thing they could devise, and keep the faith. For, in her “management” of John Estover and his affairs, the little French woman kept so close to the thing he insisted upon, that when her innovations were discovered, as they sometimes were, they were considered venial instead of criminal—and this is just the difference between wisdom and folly. For, upon one occasion, when he had said: