"I defy you to do it, sir."
"Don't be too sure. Now listen. In the first place, you will get married."
"No, sir-r!" exclaimed Georgia, with emphasis: "I scorn the insinuation! I am going to be an old maid, like Miss Jerusha."
"Don't interrupt, Miss Darrel; it's not polite. You will marry some sweet youth with nice curling whiskers, and his hair parted in the middle, and you will mend his old coats, and read him the newspaper, and trudge with him to market, and administer curtain lectures, and raise Shanghai roosters, and take a prize every year for the best butter and the nicest quilts in the county; and finally you will die, and go up to heaven, where you will belong, and have a wooden tombstone erected to your memory, with your virtues inscribed on it in letters five inches long."
"Shall I, indeed! that's all you know about it," said Georgia, half inclined to be provoked at this picture; "no, sir; I am bound to astonish the world some of these days—how, I haven't quite decided, but I know I shall do it. As for your delightful picture of conjugal felicity, you may be a Darby some day, but I will never be a Joan."
"You might be worse."
"And will be, doubtless. I never expect to be anything very good. Emily Murray will do enough of that for both of us."
"Emily is a good girl. Do you know what she reminds one of?"
"A fragrant little spring rose, I imagine."
"Yes, of that, too; but she is more like the river just now as it flows on smooth, serene, untroubled and shining, smiling in the sunshine, unruffled and calm."