"I really think, however, he has proposed to Rose Hillyard, and been accepted."
"Impossible! Joseph marry! I never heard anything so preposterous."
"Nevertheless, you will see now. I am sure he is in love I do not think he spoke twice to me all the time we were upon the island--only to Rose, and once or twice, when it was necessary, to Wa--W--to Mr Wilkie, I ought to say."
Margaret started and grew pale as she spoke, but her mother was too intent upon the idea of Joseph's entanglement to observe the stumble.
"My dear, he was blighted some years before you were born. There was a time when I would have laughed at the notion of a blighted man. It seemed one only fit to exist in a novel. Even the novels, some of them, used to make fun of a blighted being. There was 'Mr Toots,' I remember. But in the case of your uncle Joseph, the thing positively occurred. His affections got a wrench some time very long ago,--I never heard the particulars,--and he has never got over it to this day. He might have had any woman in the country for the asking, any time these twenty years--till lately, at least, when he began to grow stout and grey, and, one would have thought, had given up all idea of that sort of thing. There never was as good and soft-hearted a fellow as Joseph, I do believe. You don't catch many of his fellow-men playing such games of constancy, I promise you. His heart must have been shattered. So different from other men's hearts, my dear, as you'll find out! They seem generally to be made of india-rubber--able to swell or contract any quantity, but there's no break in them. You may jump on them, if they will let you; but you will not crush or bruise them. Joseph is the exception to a universal rule--the best brother-in-law and friend that ever lived. But you will not persuade me that he would ask any one to marry him, after the dozen or more fine women I have seen throw themselves at his head; and he never knew it, I do believe. The idea of Joseph becoming entangled! There's no constancy in man, if it turns out that he has succumbed to a woman's wiles. If what men call their heart has begun to sprout again with him, it is an unbreakable article for sure.... But I will not believe it: it would spoil my ideal of a perfect love."
"Have you not noticed, mamma, how much he and Rose have been together?"
"Now you speak of it, he has certainly taken most unusual notice of her--for him, that is. But think of the disparity in age!"
"She saved him from drowning, remember."
"That is enough to account for their striking up a fast friendship. But she is no forlorn damsel, and no pauper, evidently. She may choose where she likes. Why should she take up with a man old enough to be her father?"
"I do not think anybody need look on Uncle Joseph as old. There are very few young fellows to compare with him for activity or strength, or niceness every way. And he is so well off, besides."