“They're a good deal alike,” Jackson suggested.
“Westover preferred not to meet his overture. You'll be back, you know, almost as soon as the season commences, next summer.”
“Yes,” Jackson assented, more cheerfully. “And now, Cynthy's sure to be here.”
“Yes, she will be here,” said Westover, not so cheerfully.
Jackson seemed to find the opening he was seeking, in Westover's tone. “What do you think of gettin' married, anyway, Mr. Westover?” he asked.
“We haven't either of us thought so well of it as to try it, Jackson,” said the painter, jocosely.
“Think it's a kind of chance?”
“It's a chance.”
Jackson was silent. Then, “I a'n't one of them,” he said, abruptly, “that think a man's goin' to be made over by marryin' this woman or that. If he a'n't goin' to be the right kind of a man himself, he a'n't because his wife's a good woman. Sometimes I think that a man's wife is the last person in the world that can change his disposition. She can influence him about this and about that, but she can't change him. It seems as if he couldn't let her if he tried, and after the first start-off he don't try.”
“That's true,” Westover assented. “We're terribly inflexible. Nothing but something like a change of heart, as they used to call it, can make us different, and even then we're apt to go back to our old shape. When you look at it in that light, marriage seems impossible. Yet it takes place every day!”