“Naturally. Why, I am lodged like a prince. I suppose Mr. Echlin must be nearly sixty; but many men of fifty look older. There is no reason why he shouldn’t—is there, mother?”
“Shouldn’t what, Mark?”
“Marry again, mother. Of course second marriages are not like first marriages; but when a man has a big house, and is all alone. He hasn’t said a word to me; but the best bedroom is to be done up—for he asked me to help him choose the paper—and one of the drawing-rooms, Mrs. Cotton said, is to be refurnished as a morning room.”
“That looks suspicious, doesn’t it, mother?” said Eveline, with saucy gravity.
“I hope,” said Mark, following out the train of his own thoughts, “it will not be too young a lady. It doesn’t look nice to see a man with a bald head with a girl who might be his daughter for a wife.”
“It would be a pity,” assented Mrs. Fenner. “I wonder why men always consider themselves so young when they marry. I remember John Brattlebury, a cousin of your father’s, as nice a man as ever lived, to whom it never occurred to marry until he was well past forty. Your father innocently suggested to him the name of a lady of about five-and-thirty, who we knew liked him, and to whom the position he was able to offer her would have been a decided gain. You’d hardly believe it, but he was almost offended, went down into Cumberland, and came home with a wife of eighteen, who knew no more of his tastes and occupations than he of hers.”
“But, mother,” said Eveline, “what was the girl thinking of?”
“Of getting a change, my dear—being mistress in a house instead of number two or three in a string of daughters. Time is apt to seem long at eighteen, and a middle-aged bachelor, when he comes to woo, has many advantages. If she cannot admire the brightness of his eyes or the elegance of his figure, she may esteem him for his experience and intelligence, and diamonds and knicknacks are powerful persuasors to some natures.”
“And really, mamma, if you think of it, it may not be so bad, after all. Shakespeare says—
‘Let still woman take