"Didn't his father come over here with a bundle on his back, an immigrant?"
"Why, now, we're all immigrants, more or less, you know. Didn't your ancestors come over from England?"
"James Lowell—"
"Yes, I know, they came in the Mayflower, or pretty nearly ... that is, those that did come. Of course, on one side you're right, and we're all immigrants and foreigners, except you! You're the only real native American!"
And the doctor chuckled, while his wife started to walk into the house. A standing joke with him was Mrs. Lowell's aboriginal ancestry. Her grandfather, in Vermont, had married a French-Canadian, and the doctor pretended to have discovered that this grandmother was half Indian. He would point to her miniature portrait on the parlour-wall, her straight black hair and high cheek-bones, as confirmation. Mrs. Lowell and Mary too had the high cheek-bones, they had also great capacity for silence, which the doctor said was an Indian trait—not to mention the ferocity of which he sometimes accused his wife. Equally a jest with him was her undoubted descent from a genteel English family which actually did boast a crest and motto—and the fact that Mrs. Lowell treasured a seal with these family arms, and though she did not use it, she might, any day. And how did she reconcile her pride in that seal with her pride in the grandfather who had fought in the Revolution?
But the doctor, seeing his wife walk away, stuck his pitchfork in the ground and followed her, saying penitently:
"There, there, now, I was only joking."
"Yes, you'd joke if a person was dying!... But you know very well what I'm thinking about is his character, that's what worries me. His father drank. And he's got nothing to hold him anywhere, he's a rolling stone, I'm sure. I don't believe he has principles. And he's been roaming around for four years, getting into all sorts of bad habits, no doubt—"
The doctor sighed. It was useless to oppose his wife's idea that the life of a soldier was mainly indulgence, not to say license. Useless to point to Laurence's military record, for she did not approve of the war, her position being that people should be let alone and not interfered with. If they wanted to keep slaves, let them, they were responsible for their sins. If they wanted to secede, it was a good riddance. How did she reconcile this principle of non-resistance with the fact that she imposed her own will whenever she could on all around her? She didn't. That was her strength, she never tried to reconcile any of her ideas with one another—it was impossible to argue with her. So he sighed, for he knew she wanted comfort, her pride and her love for Mary were bleeding—and he couldn't give it. He was doubtful himself about this marriage. What he finally said was cold enough comfort:
"I don't think we can help it."