"Philip has got too much money to marry a girl with nothing."
Mr. Burrage laughed. His wife demanded to know what he was laughing at? and he said "the logic of her arithmetic."
"You men have no more logic in action, than we women have in speculation. I am logical the other way."
"That is too involved for me to follow. But it occurs to me to ask, Why should there be any match in the case here?"
"That's so like a man! Why shouldn't there? Take a man like my brother, who don't know what to do with himself; a man whose eye and ear are refined till he judges everything according to a standard of beauty;—and give him a girl like that to look at! I said she reminded me of one of Domenichino's sybils—but it isn't that. I'll tell you what it is. She is like one of Fra Angelico's angels. Fancy Philip set down opposite to one of Fra Angelico's angels in flesh and blood!"
"Can a man do better than marry an angel?"
"Yes! so long as he is not an angel himself, and don't live in
Paradise."
"They do not marry in Paradise," said Mr. Burrage dryly. "But why a fellow may not get as near a paradisaical condition as he can, with the drawback of marriage, and in this mundane sphere,—I do not see."
"Men never see anything till afterwards. I don't know anything about this girl, Chauncey, except her face. But it is just the way with men, to fall in love with a face. I do not know what she is, only she is nobody; and Philip ought to marry somebody. I know where they are from. She has no money, and she has no family; she has of course no breeding; she has probably no education, to fit her for being his wife. Philip ought to have the very reverse of all that. Or else he ought not to marry at all, and let his money come to little Phil Chauncey."
"What are you going to do about it?" asked the gentleman, seeming amused.