“A chance to enjoy herself, and to see people, and to feel that she’s young, and—oh, a chance to get married, if you will have me say it.”
“I thought so,” said Dick. “You may as well let her go back to private life, Bertha; she’ll never be a success on any stage of that kind. I don’t believe any man ever wanted to marry her, or ever will.”
“You can’t tell,” said Bertha musingly. “So many fellows come here! I should think some of them might fancy her.”
“No, they will not,” said Richard deliberately. “You mark my words; that girl will never get married. Yes, I know she’s good, and she’s clever, and really not bad looking, either, when you take her to pieces. But she’s not interesting—that’s the gist of the whole matter, and nothing you can say or do will alter that.”
“She may not be interesting to you, but she is to me,” returned Bertha. “And that argument goes for nothing, Dick. Scores of uninteresting girls get married every year. Here is Sarah Latimer at thirty, or near it, with nothing in this world to occupy her, or take up her attention. Her uncle and aunt are very good to her, but they don’t need her—she is rather in the way, if anything. That big house is all solemnly comfortable and well arranged, and oppressively neat. The servants have been there for years. The furniture was bought in the age when it was made to last, and it has lasted. The curtains are always drawn in the parlor, and if a chink of light comes in, Mrs. Latimer draws them closer; everything is dim and well preserved, and smells stuffy when it doesn’t smell of oilcloth. It gives me the creeps!”
“You are eloquent,” said Richard.
“There is only one place that looks as if it were ever used,” continued Bertha, unheeding, “and that’s the sitting-room off the parlor. It has a faded green lounge in it, and discolored family photographs in oval walnut frames, and two big haircloth rockers, with tidies on them, on either side of the table, which holds a lamp, a newspaper—not a pile of them, they are always cleared away neatly—and a piece of knitting work. Here Mr. and Mrs. Latimer doze all the evening.”
“What on earth has all this to do with Sarah’s marriage?” asked Richard.
“Everything! Don’t you see that the poor girl is just being choked by degrees; it’s a case of slow suffocation. She lived East after she left school until five years ago, and came back to find her girl friends married and moved away. People, of course, sent her invitations, and were polite to her, but there seemed no particular place for her, anywhere. She’s too clever for most of the men here, and her standard is above them. She’s what I call a very highly educated girl.”
“You seem to suit them,” said Richard, laughing.