“And I really must say again that you ought not to be in such a hurry, and wait for a few years. You might go higher than a bankrupt pa’son’s girl then.”
“The fact is, mother,” said Stephen impatiently, “you don’t know anything about it. I shall never go higher, because I don’t want to, nor should I if I lived to be a hundred. As to you saying that she’s after me, I don’t like such a remark about her, for it implies a scheming woman, and a man worth scheming for, both of which are not only untrue, but ludicrously untrue, of this case. Isn’t it so, father?”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand the matter well enough to gie my opinion,” said his father, in the tone of the fox who had a cold and could not smell.
“She couldn’t have been very backward anyhow, considering the short time you have known her,” said his mother. “Well I think that five years hence you’ll be plenty young enough to think of such things. And really she can very well afford to wait, and will too, take my word. Living down in an out-step place like this, I am sure she ought to be very thankful that you took notice of her. She’d most likely have died an old maid if you hadn’t turned up.”
“All nonsense,” said Stephen, but not aloud.
“A nice little thing she is,” Mrs. Smith went on in a more complacent tone now that Stephen had been talked down; “there’s not a word to say against her, I’ll own. I see her sometimes decked out like a horse going to fair, and I admire her for’t. A perfect little lady. But people can’t help their thoughts, and if she’d learnt to make figures instead of letters when she was at school ’twould have been better for her pocket; for as I said, there never were worse times for such as she than now.”
“Now, now, mother!” said Stephen with smiling deprecation.
“But I will!” said his mother with asperity. “I don’t read the papers for nothing, and I know men all move up a stage by marriage. Men of her class, that is, parsons, marry squires’ daughters; squires marry lords’ daughters; lords marry dukes’ daughters; dukes marry queens’ daughters. All stages of gentlemen mate a stage higher; and the lowest stage of gentlewomen are left single, or marry out of their class.”
“But you said just now, dear mother——” retorted Stephen, unable to resist the temptation of showing his mother her inconsistency. Then he paused.
“Well, what did I say?” And Mrs. Smith prepared her lips for a new campaign.