"Now that's good," he said, just as if he had never heard it before; "and it's my meaning exactly. Don't let your spirits go down——"
"For there's many a girl, as I know well,
A-looking for you in the town,"
Beth concluded, her spirits rising uproariously.
"Beth!" her mother remonstrated, but with a smile.
"The worst of it is, the ones on the look-out are not the ones with the good looks," the doctor observed, also smiling.
"But they are the ones with the money," Beth rejoined. "I wonder how it is that plain girls so often have money. I suppose the money-grubbing spirit comes out in ugliness in the female branch."
Tea was brought in, but Beth refused to take any. The doctor tried to persuade her.
"You had better change your mind," he said. "Ladies are privileged to change their minds."
"I know," said Beth. "Ladies are privileged to be foolish. It is almost the only privilege men allow them. I scorn it myself. At school we were warned to be firm when once we had said 'No, thank you.' Miss Ella used to say that people who allowed themselves to be over-persuaded and changed their minds lost self-control and became self-indulgent eventually."
"Ah, that makes me think of my poor dear mother," said the doctor. "A better and more consistent woman never lived. Once she said a thing, you couldn't move her. She was a good mother to me! I was always her favourite son. But, like other young fellows, I'm afraid I didn't half appreciate her till I had lost her."