Grace Carden ran to the window, and saw Henry Little go away slowly, and hanging his head.  This visible dejection in her manly lover made her heart rise to her throat, and she burst out sobbing and weeping with alarming violence.

Mr. Carden found her in this state, and set himself to soothe her.  He told her the understanding he had come to with Mr. Little, and begged her to be as reasonable and as patient as her lover was.  But the appeal was not successful.  “He came to see me,” she cried, “and he has gone away without seeing me.  You have begun to break both our hearts, with your reason and your prudence.  One comfort, mine will break first; I have not his fortitude.  Oh, my poor Henry!  He has gone away, hanging his head, broken-hearted:  that is what you have done for me.  After that, what are words?  Air—­air—­and you can’t feed hungry hearts with air.”

“Well, my child, I am sorry now I did not bring him in here.  But I really did it for the best.  I wished to spare you further agitation.”

“Agitation!” And she opened her eyes with astonishment.  “Why, it is you who agitate me.  He would have soothed me in a moment.  One kind and hopeful word from him, one tender glance of his dear eye, one pressure of his dear hard hand, and I could have borne anything; but that drop of comfort you denied us both.  Oh, cruel! cruel!”

“Calm yourself, Grace, and remember whom you are speaking to.  It was an error in judgment, perhaps—­nothing more.”

“But, then, if you know nothing about love, and its soothing power, why meddle with it at all?”

“Grace,” said Mr. Carden, sadly, but firmly, “we poor parents are all prepared for this.  After many years of love and tenderness bestowed on our offspring, the day is sure to come when the young thing we have reared with so much care and tenderness will meet a person of her own age, a stranger; and, in a month or two, all our love, our care, our anxiety, our hopes, will be nothing in the balance.  This wound is in store for us all.  We foresee it; we receive it; we groan under it; we forgive it.  We go patiently on, and still give our ungrateful children the benefit of our love and our experience.  I have seen in my own family that horrible mixture, Gentility and Poverty.  In our class of life, poverty is not only poverty, it is misery, and meanness as well.  My income dies with me.  My daughter and her children shall not go back to the misery and meanness out of which I have struggled.  They shall be secured against it by law, before she marries, or she shall marry under her father’s curse.”

Then Grace was frightened, and said she should never marry under her father’s curse; but (with a fresh burst of weeping) what need was there to send Henry away without seeing her, and letting them comfort each other under this sudden affliction?  “Ah, I was too happy this morning,” said the poor girl.  “I was singing before breakfast.  Jael always told me not to do that.  Oh! oh! oh!”