'No,not when you talk so. A girl has not "got to be married." And if you marry some one you can live without, you deserve what you will get.'
'What will I get?' said Josephine.
'John Charteriswithout the bouquets and the fooling.'
'I don't know but he's very good,' said Josephine meditatively. 'And Hazel, a girl can't live without getting married. What should I do, for instance?'
'Wait till the right person comes,' said Hazel. 'And if he never comes, be thankful that you escaped the wrong one.'
'But suppose the right person, as you call him, is poor?' said the young lady with a peculiar subdued inflexion of voice.
'O, is that it!' said Wych Hazel. 'Then if he thinks you can make him rich. I would keep up the delusion.'
'But I can't, Hazel. Papa hasn't much to give any of us. He has just enough to get along with comfortably.'
'There are other things in the world besides money, I suppose?' said Hazel. 'And I know there could be no starvation wages for me, like diamonds from a hand I did not love.'
'I like diamonds though,' said Josephine. 'And it's dreadful to be poor. You don't know anything about it, Hazel. You're of no consequence, you have no power, nobody cares about you, even you've got to ask leave to speak; and then nobody listens to you! I mean, after you are too old to flirt. I don't want to be poor. And Mr. Charteris would put me beyond all that. He has plenty. And they say I would love him well enough by and by. It's such a bore!' And the young lady leaned her head upon her hand with a really disconsolate face.