“Don’t tease me, David. You understand.”
“I suppose that means, young lady,” I said, thinking of something I had been impelled to write a few days ago, “that when the time comes, you’ll go whisking out of this house on the arm of some stranger, without even saying ‘by your leave’.”
“If you mean shall I decide for myself—of course, David!”
“And even a big brother’s advice—”
“No, David; not even you. How can any one else know? And then, think of the responsibility of deciding such a thing! If I really cared, I should believe in him, no matter what any one would tell me.”
“Molly,” I said, a bit surprised though to find myself playing the part of Wisdom, “I am not much worried about you. You will make no mistake. There’s an honest, direct way you have of facing life that I think I can trust. Only, I want you to value yourself very high, and I’m afraid sometimes that just because you are so straightforward and unselfish you may not realize what you are worth.”
“That’s very dear of you,” she said pensively. “Of course, I won’t pretend to you that I don’t—well, that I don’t sometimes look ahead and wonder. Of course, I do. And I have a very high ideal.”
“It is so easy to make mistakes. It’s when you want to love, my dear little sister, that it is easy to believe you do love. Such awful mistakes can be made.”
“Now you are thinking of Ben,” she said irrelevantly.
“No, no, I was thinking of myself,” I said hastily, for Letty was a subject I could not discuss with her. “Do you know, if I hadn’t been prevented—I would—well, I don’t want to say I would have—I might have thrown away my whole life on a mad suicidal marriage?”