Mrs. Towne seated herself in the chair that Dr. Towne had vacated, arranged her dress and folded her hands in her lap.
“It is Nan Gerard again! What a flirt that girl is! She called yesterday and Ralph chanced to come in while she was here; she gave him such an invitation to invite her to drive with him that he could not—that is, he did not—refuse. I wish that he wouldn’t, sometimes; but he says that he is amused and no one is harmed. I am not so sure of that. I do not understand Miss Gerard. I think that I do not understand girls of this generation. But I understand you.”
“I wish that you would teach me to be as wise.”
“You will be by and by. Do you know what I would like to ask you to promise?”
“I can not imagine.”
“I have studied you. If you will give yourself five years to think, to grow, you will marry at thirty the man that you would refuse to-day. You are impetuous to-day, you form your judgments rashly, you despise what you can not understand, and you are not yet capable of the love that hopeth all things, endureth all things, that suffereth long and is kind.”
“That is true; I am not capable of it. I have no patience with myself, nor with others.”
“If you will wait these five years, your life and another life might be more blessed.”
“Mrs. Towne! No one loves me. There is no occasion for me not to wait. I could promise without the least difficulty for the happiness or unhappiness of marriage is as unattainable to me to-day as the happiness or unhappiness of old age.”
“I will not ask you to promise, my daughter, but I will ask you to promise this; before you say to any man, ‘Yes,’ will you come to me and talk it all out to me? As if I were really your mother!”