“He is improving greatly,” said Mr. Wadsworth, pulling one of Dine’s long curls straight. “He is going away Monday to finish his studies.”
“I honor him,” said Tessa, flushing slightly.
“Don’t,” said Dine, “he sha’n’t have you, Tessa. Don’t honor him.”
“That’s all you and your father think of—keeping Tessa. She needs the wear and tear of married life to give her character.”
“It’s queer about that,” rejoined Tessa in a perplexed tone, playing with her napkin ring. “If such discipline be the best, why is any woman permitted to be without it? Why does not the fitting husband appear as soon as the girl begins to wish for him? In the East, where it is shameful for a girl not to be married at eleven, I have yet to learn that the wives are noted for strength or beauty of character.”
“You may talk,” said her mother, heatedly, “but two years hence you will dance in a brass kettle.”
“I hope that I shall work in it,” answered Tessa, coloring painfully, however. Whether her lips were touched with a slight contempt, or tremulous because she was very, very much hurt, Dinah could not decide; she was silent because she could not think of any thing sharp enough to reply; she never liked to be too saucy.
Mr. Wadsworth spoke in his genial voice: “It’s a beautiful thing, daughters, to help a good man live a good life.”
Dinah thought: “I would love to do such a beautiful thing.” Tessa was saying to herself, “Oh, what should I do if my father were to die!”
Mr. Wadsworth pushed back his chair, went around to his wife and kissed her. Tessa loved him for it.