"I tell you she is for Leo, and she is very clever and strong-minded, which is just what he wants—a wife who can take care of him."
"Oh, deliver me from a strong-minded lady!" I cried. "Damer is quite welcome to her."
"Your one isn't a bit strong-minded," said Maria. "She is very pretty, but has no will of her own at all. She leans completely on Frances; I don't know what she'll do when she marries, for they have been orphans since they were quite children, and have never lived apart for a week."
At this point Polly broke in with even more warmth and directness of speech than usual,
"Frances Chislett is the most superior girl I ever knew. Men always laugh at strong-minded women; but I'm sure I don't know why. I can't think how any human being with duties and responsibilities can be either more useful or more agreeable for being weak-minded."
And this was all that Polly contributed to our nonsensical conversation about the heiresses.
After she came I forsook the society of Maria. I knew now that she only wanted to talk to me about the Rector and the parish. Besides, though Maria was strongly interested in Dacrefield for Clerke's sake, she knew much less of it than Polly, with whom I revisited numberless haunts of our childhood, the barns and stables, the fernery, the "Pulpit" and the "Pew."
I did not tell her of my romance with Maria. I was not proud of it. But as we sat together in the old apple-room above the stables, I confided to her my "unfortunate attachment," which I had now sufficiently recovered from not to be offended by her opinion, that it was all for the best that it had ended as it had.
I do not remember exactly how it was that I came to know that Polly—even Polly—had her own private heart-ache. I think I took an unfair advantage of her strict truthfulness, when I once suspected that she had a secret, and insisted upon her confiding in me as I had done in her. Nurse Bundle gave me the first hint. Mrs. Bundle, however, believed that "Miss Mary" was only waiting for me to ask her to be mistress of Dacrefield Hall. And though she had "never seen the young lady that was good enough for her boy," she graciously allowed that I might "do worse than marry Miss Mary."
"My time's pretty near come, my dear," said Mrs. Bundle, "but many's the time I pray the Lord to let me live to put in if it is but a pin, when your lady dresses for her wedding."