“He says we should not marry now—that I ought to be better able to take care of you. And of course he’s right.”
There was a pause; then suddenly Frank exclaimed, “Sylvia, I can’t be just a farmer if I’m going to marry you.”
“What can you be, Frank?”
“I’m going to go to college.”
“But that would take four years!”
“No, it needn’t. I could dig in and get into the Sophomore class this winter. I’ve been through a military academy, and I was going to Harvard, where my father and my grandfather went, but I thought it was my duty to come home and see to the place. But now my brother has grown up, and he has a good head for business.”
“What would you do ultimately?”
“I’ve always wanted to study law, and I think now I ought to. Nobody is going to be willing for us to marry at once; and they’re much less apt to object to me if I’m seriously going to make something of myself.”
Sylvia went over the next morning to get her uncle’s blessing. The good Bishop gave it to her—together with some exhortations which he judged she needed. They were summed up in one sentence which he pronounced: “There is nothing more unhappy in this world than a serious-minded man with a worldly-minded wife.” Poor old Uncle Basil, with his snow-white hair and his patient, saintly face, worn with care—how much of his own soul he put into that utterance! Sylvia laid her head upon his shoulder, and let the tears run down upon his coat.
After a while, he remarked, “Sylvia, your aunt saw Frank come here.”