“Bless you, my children!” said I.
It was actually for this, as holding out encouragement to their reckless, feckless plans, that Wisdom, in the person of MacLachan, the tailor, reprehended me, rather than for my historical intentions regarding the pair.
“What’ll they be marryin’ on?” demanded Mac Wisdom—that is to say, MacLachan.
“Spring and youth,” I said. “The fragrance of lilac in the air, the glow of romance in their hearts. What better would you ask?”
“A bit of prudence,” said MacLachan.
“Prudence!” I retorted scornfully. “The miser of the virtues. It may pay its own way through the world. But when did it ever take Happiness along for a jaunt?”
I was quite pleased with my little epigram until the Scot countered upon me with his observation about two young fools and an old one.
Oh, well! Likely enough. Most unwise, and rash and inexcusable, that headlong mating; and there will be a reckoning to pay. Babies, probably, and new needs and pressing anxieties, and Love will perhaps flutter at the window when Want shows his grim face at the door; and Wisdom will be justified of his forebodings, and yet—and yet—who am I, old and lonely and uncompanioned, yet once touched with the spheral music and the sacred fire, that I should subscribe to the dour orthodoxies of MacLachan and that ilk?
Years and years ago a bird flew in at my window, a bird of wonderful and flashing hues, and of lilting melodies. It came; it tarried—and I let the chill voice of Prudence overbear its music. It left me. But the song endures; the song endures, and all life has been the richer for its echoes. So let them hold and cherish their happiness, the two young fools.
As for the old one, would that some good fairy, possessed of the pigment and secret of perishable youth, might come down and paint his nose green!