“My sister is not my friend. Neither did she ask me to pick out her husband.”
Rachel stood, twisting her fingers together nervously. “Bunny, do you really—you aren’t just speaking on an impulse?”
“Well, I suppose it’s an impulse. I seem to have to blurt it out. But it’s an impulse I’ve had a good many times.”
“And you won’t be sorry?”
He laughed. “It depends upon your answer.”
“Stop joking, please—you frighten me. I can’t afford to let you make a mistake. It’s so dreadfully serious!”
“But why take it that way?”
“I can’t help it; you don’t know how a woman feels. I don’t want you to do something out of a generous impulse, and then you’d feel bound, and you wouldn’t be happy. You oughtn’t to marry a girl out of the sweat-shops.”
“Good God, Rachel, my father was a mule-driver.”
“Yes, but you’re Anglo-Saxon; away back somewhere your ancestors were proud of themselves. You ought to marry a tall, fair woman that will stay beautiful all her life, and look right in a drawing-room. Jewish women bear two or three children, and then they get fat, and you wouldn’t like me.”