Not that they were displeased! Mr. and Mrs. Whittaker had been too happy in their own married life to grudge either of their girls entering upon the same joys. But they had not seen it coming. Parents are often like that, and so the news came upon them with startling suddenness.
“I am not surprised, though,” said Regina to her husband and Julia when the great news had been broached and Harry Marksby had gone to seek his lady-love in the seclusion of the girls’ own sitting-room, “I am not surprised. She is very beautiful.”
“Oh, mother, how can you stuff her up like that?” cried Julia. “Nobody thinks Maudie very beautiful but yourself—not even Harry. You shouldn’t do it, dear. It gives us such a wrong idea of ourselves, or it might do if we hadn’t got the sense to see what we see in our looking-glasses.”
“Your modesty,” said Regina, “is most becoming. I honor and admire you for it—”
“I’m off to my housekeeping class,” said Julia, whisking herself out of the room.
“That is the most wonderful thing about our girls,” said Regina to Alfred, when they found themselves alone, “that is the most wonderful thing about our girls—their utter absence of self-consciousness. Beauty has never been a bane to them, because they have never had a vain thought between them. It is a beautiful and wonderful thing.”
“They’re good-looking enough,” said Alfred, “but they’ll never, either of them, be a patch upon you, dearest.”
“Upon me?” She blushed rosy red in spite of her fifty and odd years. “Why, Alfie, looks were never my strong point. They get their looks from you.”
“Nobody but yourself ever thought so, Queenie,” said Alfred Whittaker, with an indulgent glance at his wife; “and everybody may not think of our girls just as you do.”
“And as you do, Alfie?”