“You dear, foolish little woman. What was there to worry over?”
“Watts! You won’t give your consent?”
“Of course we will. Why, what more do you want? Money, reputation, brains, health.” (That was the order in which Peter’s advantages ranged themselves in Watts’s mind). “I don’t see what more you can ask, short of a title, and titles not only never have all those qualities combined, but they are really getting decidedly nouveau richey and not respectable enough for a Huguenot family, who’ve lived two hundred and fifty years in New York. What a greedy mamma she is for her little girl.”
“Oh, Watts! But think!”
“It’s hard work, dear, with your eyes to look at. But I will, if you’ll tell me what to think about.”
“My husband! You cannot have forgotten? Oh, no! It is too horrible for you to have forgotten that day.”
“You heavenly little Puritan! So you are going to refuse Peter as a son-in-law, because he—ah—he’s not a Catholic monk. Why, Rosebud, if you are going to apply that rule to all Dot’s lovers, you had better post a sign: ‘Wanted, a husband. P.S. No man need apply.’”
“Watts! Don’t talk so.”
“Dear little woman. I’m only trying to show you that we can’t do better than trust our little girl to Peter.”
“With that stain! Oh, Watts, give him our pure, innocent, spotless child!”