“As if that interested me!” said Mrs. Bretton.

“Alas! the cruelty of my lot!” responded her son. “Never man had a more unsentimental mother than mine; she never seems to think that such a calamity can befall her as a daughter-in-law.”

“If I don’t, it is not for want of having that same calamity held over my head; you have threatened me with it for the last ten years. ‘Mamma, I am going to be married soon!’ was the cry before you were well out of jackets.”

“But, mother, one of these days it will be realized. All of a sudden, when you think you are most secure, I shall go forth like Jacob or Esau, or any other patriarch, and take me a wife, perhaps of these which are of the daughters of the land.”

“At your peril, John Graham! that is all.”