“Well, we won’t argue about it. Let us wait to hear what your mother will say to it tomorrow, when I come to see you.”
“You really will come? How pleased my mother will be!”
“Why, what else should I do? I thought you were just talking of the honor we owe to our parents! Your mother is mine too.”
“I was thinking of yours then.”
“Well, I dare say I shall have a talk with my mother first, but what your mother will think is of far more consequence to me. I know only too well what my mother will say; but you must not take that too much to heart. She has always had some girl or other in her mind for me; but if a man has any rights, surely the strongest of all is the right to choose for himself the girl to marry—if she will let him.”
“Perhaps his mother would choose better.”
“Perhaps you do not know, Annie, that I am five-and-twenty years of age: if I have no right yet to judge for myself, pray when do you suppose I shall?”
“It’s not the right I’m thinking of, but the experience.”
“Ah, I see! You want me to fall in love with a score of women first, so that I may have a chance of choosing. Really, Annie, I had not thought you would count that a great advantage. For my part, I have never once been in love but with you, and I confess to a fancy that that might almost prove a recommendation to you. But I suppose you will at least allow it desirable that a man should love the girl he marries? If my preference for you be a mere boyish fancy, as probably my mother is at this moment trying to persuade my father, at what age do you suppose it will please God to give me the heart of a man? My mother is sure to prefer somebody not fit to stand in your dingiest cotton frock. Anybody but