“Well, the old ladies will discover that my wife isn’t going to run their committees for them,” the parson said emphatically. “Besides, if I’m a Parson, you’re a Person! How do the old ladies bear it, that I haven’t any ancestors, and used to run errands in a tin-shop? I’m a Worker, literally enough.”
“You are a goose!” she told him calmly. “Don’t keep interrupting me, Billy. What do ancestors amount to? I admit I’m glad that none of mine were hanged (so far as I know), or that they didn’t run off with other people’s money—or wives. (I’d mind the wives less than the money, I must confess. I suppose you think that’s very mediæval in me?) But what credit is their good behavior to me? You are a credit to your people, whoever they were; and my own belief is that they were Princes!”
She had such a charming way of flinging up her head and looking down at him sidewise, that he was willing to have had any kind of ancestors, only to catch that look of joyous pride; and in his own joyousness he was impelled to try to take her hand in his: but her fingers were laced about her knee, and she shook her head.
“Stop! I’m talking seriously; you mustn’t be silly. You must listen to the other reasons why we are approved of: First, you are a Parson, and I’m a Worker. Secondly, you are forty-two, and ‘it’s high time’—high time, sir!—‘for you to be married’; and I’m twenty-seven—and, really, you know, ‘my chances are lessening’—(that’s what they say, my dear); and I ‘hardly deserve, after all these years’”—
“And offers?” suggested her lover.
“After all these years, Billy,—not to get a crooked stick in the end.”
“I am not crooked, I will admit,” he said.
“Thirdly,” she proceeded, “you are very good-looking, and all the old Tabbies say that a handsome minister ought to be married.”
“The old Tabbies might find something better to talk about,” he said, his face hardening. “Oh, Amy, that’s the kind of thing that makes a man cringe!—I mean a minister. Here is this great, serious, strenuous matter of living—the consciousness of God; that’s what living is in its highest expression. And to further that consciousness is the divinest human passion. A man tries to do it, gives his life to it, and immediately he is food for chattering old women! They gossip about his affairs, or his clothes, or his looks, even!” William West sat up, his face stirred with anger and pity. “But I suppose I must admit that the Parsons bring it on themselves to some extent,” he ended, with a sigh; “we don’t mingle enough with men; they distrust us, and think we talk twaddle about overcoming temptations we know nothing about. So, being shut out from masculine living, we do haunt tea-tables, and gabble about vestments. I suppose there’s no doubt of it. Amy, I believe that the old hunting, swearing parsons of three generations ago were of more real value in the world than the harmless creatures that we have now!”