"Very much as objects seen under a microscope, I fancy."
"Do you? Why?"
"In the clear understanding of details, and in the new perception of the relative bearing and importance of parts."
"Yes, I suppose so. Things are very mixed and confused as we see them here. Take what I am telling you, for instance; it is incredible, only that it is true."
"You have not told me much yet," said her friend gently.
"No. The gentleman I spoke of, the lawyer, he married my sister. And then, when I would have married Mr. Carpenter, my sister set herself against it, and she talked over my father into her views, and they both opposed it all they could."
"Did they give any reasons for their opposition?"
"O yes. Mr. Carpenter was only a farmer, they said; not my equal, and not very well off. I am sure in all real qualities he was much my superior; but just in the matter of society it was more or less true. He did not mix in society much, and did not care for it; but he had education and cultivation a great deal more than many that do; he had read and he had thought, and he could talk too, and well, to one or two alone. But they wanted me to marry a rich man. I think half the trouble in the world comes about money."
"'The love of money is the root of all evil,' the Bible says."
"I believe it. There was nothing else to be said against Mr. Carpenter, but that he had not money; if he had had it, nobody would have found out that he wanted cultivation, or anything else. But he was a poor man. And when I married him, my father cut me off from all share in the inheritance of his property."