After Alick's stern rejoinder, "Mother, the next time you speak ill of
Leam Dundas I will leave your house for ever," the subject dropped by
mutual consent, but it was none the less a living barrier between them
because raised and maintained in silence.
"Oh, these girls! these wicked girls!" Mrs. Corfield had said with a
mother's irrational anger when speaking of the circumstance to her
husband. "We bring up our boys only for them to take from us. As soon
as they begin to be some kind of comfort and to repay the anxiety of
their early days, then a wretched little huzzy steps in and makes one's
life in vain."
"Just so, my dear," said Dr. Corfield quietly. "These were the identical
words which my mother said to me when I told her I was going to marry
you."
"Your mother never liked me, and I did like Leam," said Mrs. Corfield
tartly.
"As Leam Dundas, maybe; but as Leam the wife of your son, I doubt it."
"If Alick had liked it--" said Mrs. Corfield, half in tears.
"You would have been jealous," returned her husband. "No: all girls are
only daughters of Heth to the mothers of Jacobs, and I never knew one
whom a mother thought good enough for her boy."
"You need not discredit your own flesh and blood for a stranger," cried
Mrs. Corfield crossly; and the mute man with an aggravating smile
suddenly seemed to repent of his unusual loquacity, and gradually
subsided into himself and his calculations, from which he was so rarely
aroused.
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