"That was the trouble. She could have taken you for a son--a full son, understand--and you might have been brother to the girls, if that would have pleased you. But it didn't."
"How could it? Would it have satisfied you--to take a nice girl to picnics, and hold her shawl while another fellow danced with her?"
"Put it that way, and it does seem hard. But what is a mother to do? Her daughters' prospects ought to be her chief care."
"Do you think it is right to be mercenary, then? Is money to stand for everything? Is the fellow to count for nothing?"
"By no means! A good fellow it must be--a nice fellow and a gentleman if possible, or the girl's life is spoiled. No amount of money could make her happy with a ruffian or a cad. But you must remember that Mrs Naylor's girls are young yet, and I cannot blame her for wishing to look about before fixing their position for life."
"It is hard to be passed over merely for being the first comer. And they may happen on worse subjects as well as better."
"Quite true. There is a proverb about a girl who was so particular about the stick she went to cut, that she came to the end of the wood before she could make up her mind, and then she had to content herself with a crooked one, or go without. However, proverbial philosophy goes for nothing, you know; people like to try for themselves. Still, there is excuse for a mother wishing not to bury her accomplished daughter in the backwoods, as wife to a wild huntsman. One can understand that it would be pleasant for you, after being out all day with your gun and your dog, to find your dinner laid, and a pretty young wife beside a cosy fire waiting for you; but you cannot call it unreasonable if the lady's friends wish to secure her a less solitary home. When you are out, what will she have to amuse her but needle and thread? the chickens and the cows? You would not like to think of her sitting in the kitchen talking to the help; and yet you know they will be the only human creatures she will have to speak to when you are away."
"I told you I was selling out. She can choose her home anywhere between Gaspé and Vancouver."
"You would not like to live in a town, and a girl must have been bred on a farm to live happily on one afterwards."
"You leave the husband out of the calculation. Do you think she could be happy even in London or New York with a fellow she did not care for?"