"What you say is very curious to me," said Hester. "There is a great deal that is very fine in it, Cousin Harry. To offer to give me all that is very nice of you, and I should like to help you to manage your house. I have often thought I should like to try—very likely I should not succeed, but I should like to try."
"It is the easiest thing in the world," he said with a smile that was tender, and touched Hester's heart. "As soon as ever you marry me——"
"But the preliminary is just what I don't like," said Hester. "I would rather not marry—any one. I don't see the need for it. We are very well as we are, but we don't know what a new state of things might do for us."
"I know," said Harry, "what it would do for me. It would make me very happy and comfortable at home, which I am not now. It would settle us both in life. A young fellow is thought nothing of till he is married. He may go off to the bad at any time, he may take a wrong turn; and in business he is never relied upon in the same way. When he has a wife he has given hostages to society, they say—that is what it would do for me. Except being richer and better off, and able to make your mother comfortable, and so forth, I can't say, of course, what it would do for you."
"Nor I either," she said gravely. "All these things would be very good: but it might make me into something I shouldn't like. I feel afraid of it. I have no inclination to it, but all the other way."
"By Jove!" said Harry, which was an exclamation he never used save when very hard bested, "that is not very complimentary to me."
"Did you wish me to pay you compliments? No; we are arguing out the general question," said Hester, with her serious face.
Harry was at his wits' end with impatience and provokedness, if we may use such a word. He could have seized her with his hands and shaken her, and yet, all the time, he was still conscious that this strange treatment drew a fellow on.
"I suppose all this means that you won't have me?" he said, after a pause.