So Mattie let him go cheerfully. She had never been selfish in her life, and of course she spoke no word to dissuade him; but, though she had but few letters from him, and those of the briefest possible kind,—for Sir Harry was not fond of penmanship,—those six weeks were far from being unhappy. How could they be, when they were all so good to her, Mattie thought?—when her opinion was deferred to even by her mother, and when her brothers and sisters treated her with such respect and affection?
Mattie had no sense of the ludicrous, or she would have laughed at the change in Clyde’s tone, or at the way Fred boxed Dottie’s ears for speaking rudely to Mattie: in their eyes the future Lady Challoner was a person of the utmost importance. The boys vied with each other in waiting on her; the girls were always ready with their little services. Mattie felt herself almost overwhelmed sometimes.
“Oh, mother, ask them not to do it!” she said, one day, with tears in her eyes. “I am only Mattie; I am not different; I never shall be different. I shall want to wait on you all my life,—on you and all of them!”
“It is for them to wait on you more!” returned her mother, gravely. “I am afraid they have not always been good to you, and they want to make up for it.” 362
But not all the attentions she received could move Mattie from her own humble estimate of herself; and yet in some ways, if she could have seen herself, she would have owned there was a difference. Mattie no longer fussed and fidgeted: always sweet-natured, she grew placid in her new happiness.
“I consider myself a fortunate fellow, for I have the dearest little wife in the world,” Sir Harry said to her a few days after they were married, when Mattie had, as usual, said something disparaging of herself. “Never mind what you think, so long as I am satisfied; and it is very rude of you to be always finding fault with my choice,—ay, Lady Challoner!”