The Philosopher assumed a grave and considerate air.
“A woman—especially a pretty woman,” he said, “needs protection and support in this world. Without a man’s care and guardianship she is invariably misjudged, slandered and suspected of some moral drawback—”
“Is she though!” and Dr. Maynard sniffed scornful incredulity. “Nowadays she seems to me to run amok more thoroughly when she’s married than when she’s single! She gets tired of her husband in six months or he gets tired of her—and the whole thing turns out a ghastly failure.”
“You are thinking of extreme cases,” said the Philosopher, mildly. “Yet I presume your own marriage was a success?”
A sudden smile of tenderness gave extraordinary light to the old man’s furrowed countenance.
“It was!” he answered. “But that was in the old days! My wife was ‘old-fashioned.’ Home and love, husband and child were all the world to her—she never wanted anything else, bless her dear heart! Ah! The sunshine has never seemed quite so bright to me since she died.”
The Philosopher was silent for a few minutes. There was a quiet pathos and simplicity in Maynard’s words that had an effect even on the india-rubber toughness of his academic disposition.
“Your daughter is probably like her mother in nature and tastes,” he observed, presently. “And if so, this is all the more reason why she should not be deprived of a life that would be suited to her, apart altogether from the security and status of marriage.”
Maynard grew a trifle restive under the searching gaze of the Philosopher’s eyes seen through rather unbecoming spectacles.
“It’s all very well to talk!” he grumbled. “Who’s to marry the girl? There’s nobody in this village to suit her. They’re all ‘butchers and bakers and candlestick-makers’ here—very small tradesmen all round. There’s the county Squire—he’s a widower with an idiot son who had to be put away in an asylum—and there’s a miserable little curate with a chronic cough. Of course there are a lot of wounded chaps at the Hospital,—mostly Tommies—I don’t think she’s likely to fancy one of them—”