“No. Uncle Tom refuses his consent; and I ought to add that Conny isn’t positively in love with me yet—at least she says she isn’t.”
“I don’t suppose Tom’s sanction would trouble you much, would it?” she asked, making me smile, not only by her familiar reference to her uncle, but by her off-hand manner, which, now that it was associated with nothing of rudeness, I found extremely agreeable, piquant, and characteristic.
“If Conny loved me, her father’s consent, I believe, would follow. Her mamma is strongly on my side.”
“I should never bother about relations’ opinions much,” said she. “People only marry each other, not each other’s family. Why does Tom object?”
“Because I’ve got no money.”
She pondered my reply for a little in silence, then took up the album, opened it at Conny’s picture, and mused over it.
“She is very pretty, isn’t she? Her fair hair will keep her a young looking woman when she is far beyond middle-age. I only wonder she hasn’t married long ago. But they live as quietly at Grove End as we do, and their neighbours are about as cheerful and hospitable as ours.”
She closed the album and added, “If you marry her, I hope you’ll both be happy. You’ll find her staunch, I am sure, if once you succeed in winning her love.”
“I am sure of that, too. What deep eyes she has! Her character has sometimes puzzled me. Her mind is so nimble, that it seems to be frisking about in a dozen meanings at once.”
“That kind of nimbleness makes a woman charming. Your plain-speaker is rarely followed by the men.”