A Pair of Patient Lovers | Page 3

Corinthian); and I must say that
the elder lady accepted my chair in the spirit which my secret grudge
deserved. She made me feel as if I ought to have offered it when they
first passed us; but it was some satisfaction to learn afterwards that she
gave Mrs. March, for her ready sacrifice of me, as bad a half-hour as
she ever had. She sat next to my wife, and the young lady took
Glendenning's place, and as soon as we had left them she began trying
to find out from Mrs. March who he was, and what his relation to us
was. The girl tried to check her at first, and then seemed to give it up,
and devoted herself to being rather more amiable than she otherwise
might have been, my wife thought, in compensation for the severity of
her mother's scrutiny. Her mother appeared disposed to hold Mrs.
March responsible for knowing little or nothing about Mr.
Glendenning.
"He seems to be an Episcopal clergyman," she said, in a haughty
summing up. "From his name I should have supposed he was Scotch
and a Presbyterian." She began to patronize the trip we were making,
and to abuse it; she said that she did not see what could have induced
them to undertake it; but one had to get back from Niagara somehow,
and they had been told at the hotel there that the boats were very
comfortable. She had never been more uncomfortable in her life; as for
the rapids, they made her ill, and they were obviously so dangerous that
she should not even look at them again. Then, from having done all the
talking and most of the eating, she fell quite silent, and gave her

daughter a chance to speak to my wife. She had hitherto spoken only to
her mother, but now she asked Mrs. March if she had ever been down
the St. Lawrence before.
When my wife explained, and asked her whether she was enjoying it,
she answered with a rapture that was quite astonishing, in reference to
her mother's expressions of disgust: "Oh, immensely! Every instant of
it," and she went on to expatiate on its peculiar charm in terms so
intelligent and sympathetic that Mrs. March confessed it had been part
of our wedding journey, and that this was the reason why we were now
taking the trip.
The young lady did not seem to care so much for this, and when she
thanked my wife in leaving the table with her mother, and begged her
to thank the gentlemen who had so kindly given up their places, she
made no overture to further acquaintance. In fact, we had been so
simply and merely made use of that, although we were rather meek
people, we decided to avoid our beneficiaries for the rest of the day;
and Mr. Glendenning, who could not, as a clergyman, indulge even a
just resentment, could as little refuse us his sympathy. He laughed at
some hints of my wife's experience, which she dropped before she left
us to pick up a meal from the lukewarm leavings of the Corinthian's
dinner, if we could. She said she was going forward to get a good place
on the bow, and would keep two camp-stools for us, which she could
assure us no one would get away from her.
We were somewhat surprised then to find her seated by the rail with the
younger lady of the two whom she meant to avoid if she meant
anything by what she said. She was laughing and talking on quite easy
terms with her apparently, and "There!" she triumphed as we came up,
"I've kept your camp-stools for you," and she showed them at her side,
where she was holding her hand on them. "You had better put them
here."
The girl had stiffened a little at our approach, as I could see, but a
young girl's stiffness is always rather amusing than otherwise, and I did
not mind it. Neither, that I could see, did Mr. Glendenning, and it soon
passed. It seemed that she had left her mother lying down in her

state-room, where she justly imagined that if she did not see the rapids
she should suffer less alarm from them; the young lady had come
frankly to the side of Mrs. March as soon as she saw her, and asked if
she might sit with her. She now talked to me for a decent space of time,
and then presently, without my knowing how, she was talking to Mr.
Glendenning, and they were comparing notes of Niagara; he was saying
that he thought he had seen her at the Cataract House, and she was
owning that she and her mother had at least stopped at