He looked at her sullenly and said, “A child in years with an old head and a stony heart.”
“I have always lived with my father, and so have come to think like one that is old,” said Judith, “and now, alone in the world, I must think with ripened wits.”
“I do not want that precocious, wise soul, if that be the kernel. I will have the shell—the glorious shell. Keep your wisdom and righteousness and piety for yourself. I do not value them a rush. But your love I will have.”
“I have told you there is but one way by which that may be won. But indeed, Captain Coppinger, you have made a great mistake in thinking of me. I am not suited to you to make you happy and content; any more than you are suited to me. Look out for some girl more fit to be your mate.”
“Of what sort? Come, tell me!” said Coppinger scornfully.
“A fine, well-built girl, dark-haired, dark-eyed, with cheeks like apricots, lively in mood, with nimble tongue, good-natured, not bookish, not caring for brush or piano, but who can take a rough word and return it; who will not wince at an oath, and shrink away at coarse words flung about where she is. All these things you know very well must be encountered by your wife, in your house. Did you ever read ‘Hamlet,’ Captain Coppinger?”
He made no answer, he was plucking at the slab-cover of the tomb and grinding his heels into the sand.
“In ‘Hamlet,’ we read of a king poisoned by his queen, who dipped the juice of cursed hebenon into his ears, and it curdled all his blood. It is the same with the sort of language that is found in your house when your seamen are there. I cannot endure it, it curdles my heart—choose a girl who is indifferent.”
“You shall not be subjected to it,” said Coppinger, “and as to the girl you have sketched—I care not for her—such as you describe are to be found thick as whortle-berries on a moor. Do you not know that man seeks in marriage not his counterpart but his contrast? It is because you are in all things different from me that I love you.”
“Then will naught that I have said make you desist?”