“They get used to it,” answered the Grower, calmly; “and their constitution requires it. At the same time I am not saying, mind you, that some of them may not overdo it. Moderation is the golden rule; but you carry it too far, my dear.”
“Better too little than too much,” said Mrs. Lovejoy sententiously. “Whatever I take, I like just to know that there is something in it, and no more. No, Martin, no—if you please, not more than the thickness of my thumb-nail. Well, now for what we were talking about. We can never go on like this, you know.”
“Wife, I will tell you what it is”—here Martin Lovejoy tried to look both melancholy and stern, but failed; “we do not use our duties right; we do not work up in the position to which it has pleased God to call us. We don’t make our children see that they are—bless my heart, what is the word?”
“‘Obligated’ is the word you mean. ‘Obligated’ they all of them are.”
“No, no; ‘bounden’ is the word I mean; ‘bounden’ says the Catechism. They are bounden to obey, whether they like it or no, and that is the word’s expression. Now is there one of them as does it?”
“I can’t say there is,” his wife replied, after thinking of all three of them. “Martin, no; they do their best, but you can’t have them quite tied hand and foot. And I doubt whether we should love them better, if we had them always to order.”
“Likely not. I cannot tell. They have given me no chance of trying. They do what seems best in their own eyes, and the fault of it lies with you, mother.”
“Do they ever do anything wrong, Martin Lovejoy? Do they ever disgrace you anywhere? Do they ever go about and borrow money, or trade on their name, or anything? Surely you want to provoke me, Martin, when you begin to revile my children.”
“Well,” said the Grower, blowing smoke, in the manner of a matrimonial man, “let us go to something else. Here is this affair of Mabel’s now. How do you mean to settle it?”
“I think you should rather tell me, Martin, how you mean to settle it. She might have been settled long ago, in a good position and comfortable, if my advice had been heeded. But you are the most obstinate man in the world.”