This emphasis was rather too much for my patience.
“You forget,” I said, “that Alice is able to judge for herself—she is not a girl now”——
“She is seven and twenty, Mrs. Crofton—do you mean to reproach her with her age?” said Mrs. Harley, with an angry color rising on her face.
“Reproach her! for what?” said I, constrained to laugh in the midst of my grief. “Why will you tease Alice, and yourself, and me? She is very well—she is,” I added, with a little gulp, swallowing my better knowledge, “quite contented and happy—why will you torture her into marrying? She is quite satisfied to be as she is.”
“Ah, Clare—but I have so many children to provide for!” cried poor Mrs. Harley, with a gush of tears.
This silenced me, and I said no more. But Mrs. Harley had not exhausted her budget of complaints.
“And Maurice,” said this unfortunate mother; “after the education he has had, and all the money and pains that have been expended on him—Maurice, I do believe, Mrs. Crofton, will do something violent one of these days; he will go into business, or,” with another outburst of tears, “set himself to learn a trade.”
“Surely nothing quite so bad as that,” said I, with as much sympathy as I could summon up.
“Ah, you don’t know how he speaks—if you could only hear him; and the troubles in India and this last dreadful news have had such an effect upon Maurice,” said Mrs. Harley; “you would suppose, to hear him speak, that the poor soldiers had suffered all the more because he was doing nothing. Such nonsense! And instead of going into the Church in a proper and dignified manner, like his dear father, I see nothing better for it but that he’ll make a tradesman of himself.”
“But it would be satisfactory to see him doing something for himself—improving his own position; he can never settle and make a home for himself while he has only his Fellowship. Don’t you think Maurice is right?” said I, keeping up the conversation from mere politeness, and already sufficiently tired of the interruption it made.