He twisted still, impotent, stubborn, not looking up.
`But do you really want to get married?' she asked. `Do you feel as if you ought?'
He gave her one straight look from his blue eyes.
`Yes,' he said.
`Then,' she replied, `we must all do the best we can for it, lad.'
The next time he looked up there were tears in his eyes.
`I don't want Annie to feel handicapped,' he said, struggling.
`My lad,' she said, `you're steady--you've got a decent place. If a man had needed me I'd have married him on his last week's wages. She may find it a bit hard to start humbly. Young girls are like that. They look forward to the fine home they think they'll have. But I had expensive furniture. It's not everything.'
So the wedding took place almost immediately. Arthur came home, and was splendid in uniform. Annie looked nice in a dove-grey dress that she could take for Sundays. Morel called her a fool for getting married, and was cool with his son-in-law. Mrs Morel had white tips in her bonnet, and some white on her blouse, and was teased by both her sons for fancying herself so grand. Leonard was jolly and cordial, and felt a fearful fool. Paul could not quite see what Annie wanted to get married for. He was fond of her, and she of him. Still, he hoped rather lugubriously that it would turn out all right. Arthur was astonishingly handsome in his scarlet and yellow, and he knew it well, but was secretly ashamed of the uniform. Annie cried her eyes up in the kitchen, on leaving her mother. Mrs Morel cried a little, then patted her on the back and said:
`But don't cry, child, he'll be good to you.'
Morel stamped and said she was a fool to go and tie herself up. Leonard looked white and overwrought. Mrs Morel said to him:
`I s'll trust her to you, my lad, and hold you responsible for her.'
`You can,' he said, nearly dead with the ordeal. And it was all over.
When Morel and Arthur were in bed, Paul sat talking, as he often did, with his mother.
`You're not sorry she's married, mother, are you?' he asked.
`I'm not sorry she's married--but--it seems strange that she should go from me. It even seems to me hard that she can prefer to go with her Leonard. That's how mothers are--I know it's silly.'
`And shall you be miserable about her?'
`When I think of my own wedding day,' his mother answered, `I can only hope her life will be different.'
`But you can trust him to be good to her?'
`Yes, yes. They say he's not good enough for her. But I say if a man is genuine, as he is, and a girl is fond of him--then--it should be all right. He's as good as she.'
`So you don't mind?'
`I would never have let a daughter of mine marry a man I didn't feel to be genuine through and through. And yet, there's the gap now she's gone.'