"No," he would say, "Letty is one of those women men never think of as a bride."
"But why?" Dove would demand then, loyally. "She is the very woman to find real happiness in loving and self-sacrifice. Adversity would never daunt her, and yet," my wife would say with scorn rising in her voice, "the very men who need such help and comprehension and comradeship in their careers, would pass her by, and for a chit of girl who would never be happy sharing their struggles—but only their success!"
"My dear," father would reply, sagely, "a man glories in his power to hand a woman something she cannot reach herself. Letty Primrose has too long an arm."
"But if a man once married Letitia—" Dove would protest, and father would chuckle then.
"Ah, yes, my dear, if one only would! But there's the rub. Doubtless he would find Letitia much like other women, quite willing he should reach things down to her from the highest shelf. But he must be a wise man to suspect just that—to guess what lies beneath our Letty's apparent self-sufficiency."
"An older man might," Dove once suggested. "A general, or a great professor, or a minister plenipotentiary."
"Doubtless," he answered, "but our Grassy Ford is a narrow world, my dear. The young sprigs in it are only silly lads, and the elder bachelors are very musty ones, I fear—and not an ambassador among them. I doubt very much if Letitia will ever meet him—that man you mean, who might choose Letty's love through wisdom, and whose wisdom she might choose through love."
Dove's answer was a sigh.