“I don’t say but what, if Roger is gaining five hundred a year by the time he’s thirty, he shall not choose a wife with ten thousand pounds down; but I do say, if a boy of mine, with only two hundred a year—which is all Roger will have from us, and that not for a long time—goes and marries a woman with fifty thousand to her portion, I’ll disown him— it would be just disgusting.
“Not if they loved each other, and their whole happiness depended upon their marrying each other,” put in Mrs. Hamley mildly.
“Pooh! away with love! Nay, my dear, we loved each other so dearly we should never have been happy with any one else; but that’s a different thing. People aren’t like what they were when we were young. All the love now-a-days is just silly fancy, and sentimental romance, as far as I can see.”
Mr. Gibson thought that he had settled everything about Molly’s going to Hamley before he spoke to her about it, which he did not do, until the morning of the day on which Mrs. Hamley expected her. Then he said—“By the way, Molly! you’re to go to Hamley this afternoon; Mrs. Hamley wants you to go to her for a week or two, and it suits me capitally that you should accept her invitation just now.”
“Go to Hamley! This afternoon! Papa, you’ve got some odd reason at the back of your head—some mystery, or something! Please tell me what it is. Go to Hamley for a week or two! Why, I never was from home before this without you in all my life.”
“Perhaps not. I don’t think you ever walked before you put your feet to the ground. Everything must have a beginning.”
“It has something to do with that letter that was directed to me, but that you took out of my hands before I could even see the writing of the direction.” She fixed her grey eyes on her father’s face, as if she meant to pluck out his secret.
He only smiled and said—“You’re a witch, goosey!”
“Then it had! But if it was a note from Mrs. Hamley, why might I not see it? I have been wondering if you had some plan in your head, ever since that day—Thursday, wasn’t it? You’ve gone about in a kind of thoughtful, perplexed way, just like a conspirator. Tell me, papa”—coming up at the time, and putting on a beseeching manner—“why mightn’t I see that note? and why am I to go to Hamley all on a sudden?”
“Don’t you like to go? Would you rather not?” If she had said that she did not want to go, he would have been rather pleased than otherwise, although it would have put him into a great perplexity; but he was beginning to dread the parting from her even for a short time. However, she replied directly—
“I don’t know—I daresay I shall like it when I have thought a little more about it. Just now I’m so startled by the suddenness of the affair, I haven’t considered whether I shall like it or not. I shan’t like going away from you, I know. Why am I to go, papa?”
“There are three old ladies sitting somewhere, and thinking about you just at this very minute; one has a distaff in her hands, and is spinning a thread; she has come to a knot in it, and is puzzled what to do with it. Her sister has a great pair of scissors in her hands, and wants—as she always does, when any difficulty arises in the smoothness of the thread—to cut it off short; but the third, who has the most head of the three, plans how to undo the knot; and she it is who has decided that you are to go to Hamley. The others are quite convinced by her arguments; so, as the Fates have decreed that this visit is to be paid, there is nothing left for you and me but to submit.”
“That’s all nonsense, papa, and you’re only making me more curious to find out this hidden reason.”