The Whole Family | Page 8

who have been brought up in the old way. A man's wife is a woman--"
"Generally," I assented, as if for argument's sake.
He gave himself time to laugh. "And she has the charge of the children as long as they're young, and she's a good deal more likely to bring up the boys like girls than the girls like boys. But the boys take themselves out of her hands pretty soon, while the girls have to stay under her thumb till they come out just the kind of women we've always had."
"We've managed to worry along with them."
"Yes, we have. And I don't say but what we fancy them as they are when we first begin to 'take notice.' One trouble is that children are sick so much, and their mothers scare you with that, and you haven't the courage to put your theories into practice. I can't say that any of my girls have inherited my constitution but this one." I knew he meant the one whose engagement was the origin of our conversation. "If you've heard my mother-in-law talk about her constitution you would think she belonged to the healthiest family that ever got out of New England alive, but the fact is there's always something the matter with her, or she thinks there is, and she's taking medicine for it, anyway. I can't say but what my wife has always been strong enough, and I've been satisfied to have the children take after her; but when I saw this one's sorrel-top as we used to call it before we admired red hair, I knew she was a Talbert, and I made up my mind to begin my system with her." He laughed as with a sense of agreeable discomfiture. "I can't say it worked very well, or rather that it had a chance. You see, her mother had to apply it; I was always too busy. And a curious thing was that though the girl looked like me, she was a good deal more like her mother in temperament and character."
"Perhaps," I ventured, "that's the reason why she was your favorite."
He dropped his head in rather a shamefaced way, but lifted it with another laugh. "Well, there may be something in that. Not," he gravely retrieved himself, "that we have ever distinguished between our children."
"No, neither have we. But one can't help liking the ways of one child better than another; one will rather take the fancy more than the rest."
"Well," my neighbor owned, "I don't know but it's that kind of shyness in them both. I suppose one likes to think his girl looks like him, but doesn't mind her being like her mother. I'm glad she's got my constitution, though. My eldest daughter is more like her grandmother in looks, and I guess she's got her disposition too, more. I don't know," he said, vaguely, "what the last one is going to be like. She seems to be more worldly. But," he resumed, strenuously, as if the remembrance of old opposition remained in his nerves, "when it came to this going off to school, or college, or whatever, I put my foot down, and kept it down. I guess her mother was willing enough to do my way, but her sister was all for some of those colleges where girls are educated with other girls and not with young men. She said they were more ladylike, and a lot more stuff and nonsense, and were more likely to be fit for society. She said this one would meet a lot of jays, and very likely fall in love with one; and when we first heard of this affair of Peggy's I don't believe but what her sister got more satisfaction out of it than I did. She's quick enough! And a woman likes to feel that she's a prophetess at any time of her life. That's about all that seems to keep some of them going when they get old." I knew that here he had his mother-in-law rather than his daughter in mind, and I didn't interrupt the sarcastic silence into which he fell. "You've never met the young man, I believe?" he asked, at quite another point, and to the negation of my look he added, "To be sure! We've hardly met him ourselves; he's only been here once; but you'll see him--you and Mrs. Temple. Well!" He lifted his head, as if he were going away, but he did not lift his arms from the fence, and so I knew that he had not emptied the bag of his unexpected confidences; I did not know why he was making them to me, but I liked him the better for them, and tried to feel that I was worthy of them. He began with