"Oh, I suppose so. Doesn't make any difference to you, of course, where I go."
"Not much," she answered.
The Witherspoon family was gathered one evening in the mother's room. It was Mrs. Witherspoon's birthday, and it was a home-like picture, this family group, with the mother sitting in a rocking-chair, fondly looking about and giving the placid heed of love to Henry whenever he spoke. On the walls were hung the portraits of early Puritans, the brave and rugged ancestors of Uncle Louis and Uncle Harvey, and all her mother's people, who were dark.
Ellen had been imitating a Miss Miller, who, it was said, was making a determined set at Henry, and Witherspoon was laughing at the aptness of his daughter's mimicry.
"I must confess," said Mrs. Witherspoon, slowly rocking herself, "that I don't see anything to laugh at. Miss Miller is an exceedingly nice girl, I'm sure, but I don't think she is at all suited to my son. She giggles at everything, and Henry is too sober-minded for that sort of a wife."
"But marriage would probably cure her giggling," Witherspoon replied, slyly winking at Henry. "To a certain kind of a girl there is nothing that so inspires a giggle as the prospect of marriage, but marriage itself is the greatest of all soberers—it sometimes removes all traces of the previous intoxication."
"Now, George, what is the use of talking that way?" She rarely called him George. "You know as well as you know anything that I didn't giggle. Of course I was lively enough, but I didn't go about giggling as Miss Miller does."
"Oh, perhaps not exactly as Miss Miller does, but"—
"George!"
"I say you didn't. But anybody can see that Ellen is a sensible girl, and yet she giggles."