At this point both husband and wife stopped to laugh over the associations connected with that word "peculiar;" it bringing to the minds of both reminders of Gough and Dickens, as well as many more common characters which those two geniuses have caricatured.
"It is true, nevertheless," Lewis said, the laugh over. "Let me see if I can explain. In the first place, both father and mother had, in their youth, lives of grinding toil and poverty. Both were shrewd, clear-headed people, with, I think, much more than the average share of brains. The result is that, despite drawbacks and privations, they made their way, acquiring, not thorough educations, it is true, but a very fair degree of knowledge on all practical subjects. The amount of information which my mother, for instance, possesses about matters concerning which she would be supposed to know nothing would surprise you. Perhaps the result of all this is natural; anyhow, it is evident. They believe that the rubbing process is decidedly the best way to secure education or anything else needed in this world. If one makes his way in spite of obstacles, they believe it is because the grit is in him, and must find its end."
"Had Dorothy, for instance, pushed her determination to attend school in town, and get a thorough education; pushed it persistently—what you would call doggedly—against argument and opposition, and everything but absolute command—she would have won the prize, and both father and mother would have, in a certain sense, respected her more than they do now. But Dorothy was not of that mould. She wanted to go on with her studies. Had everything been smooth before her, she would, doubtless, have gone on, and made a fair scholar; but to stem a current, with so much against her, required more effort of a certain kind than she knew how to make."
"I conclude," said his wife, smiling brightly on him, "that you were one of those who can push persistently."
He answered her smile, partly with a laugh, and partly with a shrug of his handsome shoulders.
"I did push—most vehemently some of the time; worked my way part of the time besides, as you know; but in the end I gained. Both father and mother have a degree of pride in my persistence; it reminds them of their own rugged natures."
"I wonder that Dorothy, crossed in her natural ambitions, did not run into the extremes, on the question of dress and society, and, well—and aimless going generally, without regard to quality or consequence. That is the rock on which so many girls shipwreck."
"I think she would have done just that thing had she been given opportunity. I think it is what both my father and mother were afraid of. It has made them draw the reins of family government very tightly. They simply commanded that singing-schools, and country school debating societies, and social gatherings, should be ignored. We were all under that command; so that the consequence is, we are almost as isolated from our neighbours as though we had none. My mother did not feel the need of society. She could not understand why any one should feel that need; consequently, she has no society. There are good and pleasant people around us, people whom it would be a pleasure to you to meet; but they never come near us, because we have, as a family, given them to understand that we have nothing to do with common humanity."
"What a strange idea! Do you know, I have wondered why it was that your neighbours didn't call on me? I thought it must be that they had a preconceived dislike for me, somehow."
"They have a preconceived belief that you will not care to see them. You would be amused to see how this withdrawal from all friendships has been translated. If father were a poor man, having a struggle to get along, it would be set down as a dislike to mingling with those who were better off in this world's goods than ourselves; but with his farm stretching before their eyes in so many smiling acres, and with his barns the finest and best stocked in the neighbourhood, we are looked upon as a family too aristocratic to mingle with country people; which is simply funny, when you take into consideration the fact that we have never been other than country people ourselves, and that we live much more plainly than any of our neighbours. But you can readily see the effect on Dorothy; she has, in a degree, dropped out of life. The occasional going to church on a pleasant Sunday, and going to market with mother when both can, on rare occasions, be spared from home, being her two excitements. She has hardly a speaking acquaintance with the neighbours about us, and no associates whatever."