“I don’t want to pry, my dear.  But I was afraid there might be something between you and Fred, and I wanted to caution you.  You see, Mary”—­here Caleb’s voice became more tender; he had been pushing his hat about on the table and looking at it, but finally he turned his eyes on his daughter—­“a woman, let her be as good as she may, has got to put up with the life her husband makes for her.  Your mother has had to put up with a good deal because of me.”

Mary turned the back of her father’s hand to her lips and smiled at him.

“Well, well, nobody’s perfect, but”—­here Mr. Garth shook his head to help out the inadequacy of words—­“what I am thinking of is—­ what it must be for a wife when she’s never sure of her husband, when he hasn’t got a principle in him to make him more afraid of doing the wrong thing by others than of getting his own toes pinched.  That’s the long and the short of it, Mary.  Young folks may get fond of each other before they know what life is, and they may think it all holiday if they can only get together; but it soon turns into working day, my dear.  However, you have more sense than most, and you haven’t been kept in cotton-wool:  there may be no occasion for me to say this, but a father trembles for his daughter, and you are all by yourself here.”

“Don’t fear for me, father,” said Mary, gravely meeting her father’s eyes; “Fred has always been very good to me; he is kind-hearted and affectionate, and not false, I think, with all his self-indulgence.  But I will never engage myself to one who has no manly independence, and who goes on loitering away his time on the chance that others will provide for him.  You and my mother have taught me too much pride for that.”

“That’s right—­that’s right.  Then I am easy,” said Mr. Garth, taking up his hat.  But it’s hard to run away with your earnings, eh child.”

“Father!” said Mary, in her deepest tone of remonstrance.  “Take pocketfuls of love besides to them all at home,” was her last word before he closed the outer door on himself.

“I suppose your father wanted your earnings,” said old Mr. Featherstone, with his usual power of unpleasant surmise, when Mary returned to him.  “He makes but a tight fit, I reckon.  You’re of age now; you ought to be saving for yourself.”

“I consider my father and mother the best part of myself, sir,” said Mary, coldly.

Mr. Featherstone grunted:  he could not deny that an ordinary sort of girl like her might be expected to be useful, so he thought of another rejoinder, disagreeable enough to be always apropos.  “If Fred Vincy comes to-morrow, now, don’t you keep him chattering:  let him come up to me.”

CHAPTER XXVI.

“He beats me and I rail at him:  O worthy satisfaction!
would it were otherwise—­that I could beat him while
he railed at me.—­”

          
                                                      —­Troilus and Cressida.