“That’s not the way to win the battle, Miss Ley. We must all fight.”
“My dear Miss Glover!” said Bertha’s aunt.
She fancied it a little impertinent for a woman twenty years younger than herself to exhort her to lead a better life. But the picture of that poor, ill-dressed creature fighting with a devil, cloven-footed, betailed and behorned, was as pitiful as it was comic; and with difficulty Miss Ley repressed an impulse to argue and to startle a little her estimable friend.
But at that moment Dr. Ramsay came in. He shook hands with both ladies.
“I thought I’d look in to see how Bertha was,” he said.
“Poor Mr. Craddock has another adversary,” remarked Miss Ley. “Miss Glover thinks I ought to take the affair seriously.”
“I do, indeed,” said Miss Glover.
“Ever since I was a young girl,” said Miss Ley, “I’ve been trying not to take things seriously, and I’m afraid now I’m hopelessly frivolous.”
The contrast between this assertion and Miss Ley’s prim manner was really funny, but Miss Glover saw only something quite incomprehensible.
“After all,” added Miss Ley, “nine marriages out of ten are more or less unsatisfactory. You say young Branderton would have been more suitable; but really a string of ancestors is no particular assistance to matrimonial felicity, and otherwise I see no marked difference between him and Edward Craddock. Mr. Branderton has been to Eton and Oxford, but he conceals the fact with very great success. Practically he’s just as much a gentleman-farmer as Mr. Craddock; but one family is working itself up and the other is working itself down. The Brandertons represent the past and the Craddocks the future; and though I detest reform and progress, so far as matrimony is concerned I prefer myself the man who founds a family to the man who ends it. But, good Heavens! you’re making me sententious.”