“Why, yes, I’ve told you so.”
“Then you had better hurry up and marry your Louise, and have a real hostess, not just a bird of passage.”
I sat up on the stool, and stared at her.
She was smoothing her hair before the mirror.
“Marry Louise?” I said.
“Don’t be absurd.
I don’t want to marry anyone.
And she isn’t ‘my’ Louise.”
“Oh!” said my cousin Rachel.
“I rather thought she was.
At least, your godfather gave me that impression.”
She sat down on one of the chairs and took up her embroidery.
Just then young John came in to draw the curtains, so I was silent.
I was fuming, though.
By what right did my godfather make such an assumption?
I waited until John had gone.
“What did my godfather say?” I asked.
“I don’t remember, specifically,” she said;
“I just think he felt it was an understood thing. He mentioned, driving back from church in the carriage, that his daughter had come over here to do the flowers, and that it had been such a handicap for you, brought up in a household of men; the sooner you married and had a wife to look after you the better.
He said Louise understood you very well, as you did her.
I hope you apologized for your bad manners on Saturday.”
“Yes, I apologized,” I said, “but it did not seem to make much difference.
I have never met Louise in so vile a humor.
By the way, she thinks you are beautiful.
And so do the Miss Pascoes.”
“How very flattering.”
“And the vicar does not agree with them.”
“How distressing.”
“But he finds you feminine.
Decidedly feminine.”
“I wonder in what way?”
“I suppose in a way different from Mrs. Pascoe.”
A bubble of laughter escaped from her, and she glanced up from her embroidery.
“How would you define it, Philip?”
“Define what?”
“The difference in our femininity, Mrs. Pascoe’s and mine.”
“Oh, heaven knows,” I said, kicking the leg of the stool, “I don’t know anything about the subject.
All I know is that I like looking at you, and I don’t like looking at Mrs. Pascoe.”
“That’s a nice simple answer, thank you, Philip.”
I might have said the same about her hands.
I liked watching them too.
Mrs. Pascoe’s hands were like boiled hams.
“It’s all nonsense about Louise, anyway,” I said, “so please forget it.
I have never considered her as a wife, and don’t intend to.”
“Poor Louise.”
“Ridiculous of my godfather to have got such an idea into his head.”
“Not really.
When two young people are of the same age, and thrown much together, and like each other’s company, it is very natural that onlookers should think of marriage.
Besides, she is a nice, good-looking girl, and very capable.
She would make you an excellent wife.”