"I don't see any occasion for being very late to bed," Mrs. Morgan said; and she drove the gleaming needle through the sock as though she were vexed at the yawning hole. "We needn't sit up till morning to talk, there will be time enough for that; and so long as Lewis went to the expense of getting supper at the village, we won't have to be hindered on that account."
"I'm most awful glad he did," interposed the candle-snuffer. "I couldn't bear to think of getting supper and washing dishes right before her."
"I wonder why not? She most likely has been used to dishes, and she knows they have to be washed. It isn't worth while to go to putting on airs before her so long as you can't keep them on. The dishes will probably have to be washed three times a day, just as they always have been. Because Lewis has got married the world isn't going to stop turning around."
How fast the darning-needle slipped through the hole, shrinking it at every turn and stabbing its sides with great gray threads!
"I most wonder why you didn't put a fire in the front room, being it was the first night; it would have been less—well, less embarrassing like," the farmer said, hunting in his brain for the right word and apparently not finding it.
"I don't know as there is any call to be embarrassed," Mrs. Morgan said, and the furrows in her face seemed to grow deeper. "I thought it was best to begin as we meant to end; and I didn't s'pose we would be likely to have fires in the front room of evenings now any more than we have had. This room has always been large enough and good enough for Lewis, and I suppose we can make a place for one more."
But she looked that moment as though the "one more" were a sore trial to her, which she endured simply because she must, and out of which she saw no gleam of comfort.
During this family discussion, John Morgan kept his feet in their elevated position on the upper hearth, and continued his steady, gloomy gaze into the fire. He was a young man, not yet twenty, but already his face looked not only gloomy but spiritless. It was not in every sense a good face; there were lines of sullenness upon it, and there were lines which, even thus early, might have been born of dissipation. Mrs. Morgan had been heard to say many a time that Lewis was a good boy, had always been a good boy, but who John took after she could not imagine; he was not a bit like the Morgans, and she was sure he did not favour her side of the house.
But, truth to tell, Lewis Morgan had at last disappointed his mother. Of course, he would get married some time—it was the way with young men; but he was still quite a young man, and she had hoped that he would wait a few years. And then she had hoped that, when the fatal day did come, he would choose one of the good, sensible, hard-working farmers' girls with which the country abounded, any one of whom would have esteemed it an honour to be connected with the Morgan family.
But to go to town for a wife, and then to plunge right into the midst of aristocracy, and actually bring away a daughter of Lyman Barrows, whose father once occupied a high position in the Government! Mrs. Morgan felt aggrieved. Farmers and farmers' wives and daughters had always been good enough for her; why were they not for her son?