Margaret Maliphant

								

most strange and unseemly thing to say?"
I did not answer, and father still looked at me with the pipe between
his finger and thumb.
"In love with Captain Forrester, indeed!" continued mother, scornfully.
"And pray, how do you know that Captain Forrester is in love with
Joyce?"
"Well, of course," answered I, with a toss of my head, "girls don't
fall in love with men unless the men are in love with them first. Who
ever heard of such a thing? Of course he's in love with Joyce."
"Stuff and nonsense!" said mother, emphatically, tapping the floor
with her foot, as she was wont to do when she was annoyed. "Captain
Forrester and your sister haven't met more than half a dozen times in
the course of their lives. I wonder what a love is going to be like
that takes the world by storm after three weeks' acquaintance."
"There is such a thing as love at first sight," answered I, with what
I know must have been an annoyingly superior air. It did not impress
mother.
"A wondrous fine thing I've been told," was all that she said.
I turned to father, who had not spoken. "Well, anyhow, they're in love
with one another," I repeated. "I know it as a fact, and he's coming
here to-morrow morning to ask your leave to marry her."
"The devil he is!" ejaculated father, roused at last.
Mother dropped her knitting. I do believe her face grew white with
horror.
"I always thought, Laban, it was a pity to have that young man about so
much when we had grown-up girls at home," moaned she, quite forgetting
my presence. "But you always would be so sure he was thinking of
nothing but those politics of yours."
"To be sure, to be sure," murmured father.
"And he was always so pleasant to all of us," she went on, as though
that, too, were something to deplore in him; "but I never did think
he'd be wanting to marry a farmer's daughter. And I should like to
know what he has got to marry any one upon," added she, after a pause,
turning to me indignantly, as though I knew the captain's affairs any
better than she did.
"His captain's pay," answered I, glibly, although I had been chilled
for a moment by this remark. "And why should you consider him a
ne'er-do-well because he earns his living in a different way to what
you do? He kills the country's enemies, and you till the country's
land. They are both honorable professions by which a man gets his bread
by the sweat of his brow."
I looked at father; all through I had spoken only to him. He smiled and
began to light his pipe. It was a sign that his mind was made up. Which
way was it made up?
"Joyce is just the girl men do fall in love with," said I, wisely; "and
as for her--well, you can't be surprised at her falling in love with a
man whom you like so much yourself."
"Ay, I do like the young man," agreed father, stanchly. "I can't help
it. They're precious few such as he whose heads are full of aught but
seeking after their own pleasure."