“My daughter cannot marry into one of these village families,” said she, without apparently the slightest consideration of the fact that we were a village family. “My daughter has been very differently brought up. I have other views for her; it is impossible; it must be understood at once that I will not have it.”
Mrs. Jameson was still talking, and Louisa and I listening with more of dismay than sympathy, when who should walk in but Caroline Liscom herself.
She did not knock—she never does; she opened the door with no warning whatsoever, and stood there.
Louisa turned pale, and I know I must have. I could not command my voice, though I tried hard to keep calm.
I said “Good-morning,” when it should have been “Good-evening,” and placed Alice's little chair, in which she could not by any possibility sit, for Caroline.
“No, I don't want to sit down,” said Caroline, and she kept her word better than Mrs. Jameson. She turned directly to the latter. “I have just been over to your house,” said she, “and they told me that you had come over here. I want to say something to you, and that is, I don't want my son to marry your daughter, and I will never give my consent to it, never, never!”
Mrs. Jameson's face was a study. For a minute she had not a word to say; she only gasped. Finally she spoke. “You can be no more unwilling to have your son marry my daughter than I am to have my daughter marry your son,” said she.
Then Caroline said something unexpected. “I would like to know what you have against my son, as fine a young man as there is anywhere about, I don't care who he is,” said she.
And Mrs. Jameson said something unexpected. “I should like to inquire what you have against my daughter?” said she.
“Well, I'll tell you one thing,” returned Caroline; “she doesn't know enough to keep a doll-baby's house, and she ain't neat.”