“Then why the d—— didn’t you, or get the old buffer to do it for you?” said the man, as he cantered away.
She looked rather disconcerted at this reply, and observing her father’s face, saw that it was quite red.
“He ought not to have spoken to ye like that!” said the old man, in the tone of one whose heart was bruised, though it was not by the epithet applied to himself. “And he wouldn’t if he had been a gentleman. ’Twas not the language to use to a woman of any niceness. You, so well read and cultivated—how could he expect ye to know what tom-boy field-folk are in the habit of doing? If so be you had just come from trimming swedes or mangolds—joking with the rough work-folk and all that—I could have stood it. But hasn’t it cost me near a hundred a year to lift you out of all that, so as to show an example to the neighborhood of what a woman can be? Grace, shall I tell you the secret of it? ’Twas because I was in your company. If a black-coated squire or pa’son had been walking with you instead of me he wouldn’t have spoken so.”
“No, no, father; there’s nothing in you rough or ill-mannered!”
“I tell you it is that! I’ve noticed, and I’ve noticed it many times, that a woman takes her color from the man she’s walking with. The woman who looks an unquestionable lady when she’s with a polished-up fellow, looks a mere tawdry imitation article when she’s hobbing and nobbing with a homely blade. You sha’n’t be treated like that for long, or at least your children sha’n’t. You shall have somebody to walk with you who looks more of a dandy than I—please God you shall!”
“But, my dear father,” she said, much distressed, “I don’t mind at all. I don’t wish for more honor than I already have!”
“A perplexing and ticklish possession is a daughter,” according to Menander or some old Greek poet, and to nobody was one ever more so than to Melbury, by reason of her very dearness to him. As for Grace, she began to feel troubled; she did not perhaps wish there and then to unambitiously devote her life to Giles Winterborne, but she was conscious of more and more uneasiness at the possibility of being the social hope of the family.
“You would like to have more honor, if it pleases me?” asked her father, in continuation of the subject.
Despite her feeling she assented to this. His reasoning had not been without its weight upon her.
“Grace,” he said, just before they had reached the house, “if it costs me my life you shall marry well! To-day has shown me that whatever a young woman’s niceness, she stands for nothing alone. You shall marry well.”