'It is not just book-learning or the want of it as makes a wife think much or little of her husband,' replied my father, evidently unwilling to give up a project which had taken deep root in his mind. 'It's a something I don't rightly know how to call it--if he's manly, and sensible, and straightforward; and I reckon you're that, my boy.'
'I don't think I should like to have a wife taller than I am, father,' said I, smiling; he smiled too, but not heartily.
'Well,' said he, after a pause. 'It's but a few days I've been thinking of it, but I'd got as fond of my notion as if it had been a new engine as I'd been planning out. Here's our Paul, thinks I to myself, a good sensible breed o' lad, as has never vexed or troubled his mother or me; with a good business opening out before him, age nineteen, not so bad-looking, though perhaps not to call handsome, and here's his cousin, not too near cousin, but just nice, as one may say; aged seventeen, good and true, and well brought up to work with her hands as well as her head; a scholar--but that can't be helped, and is more her misfortune than her fault, seeing she is the only child of scholar--and as I said afore, once she's a wife and a she'll forget it all, I'll be bound--with a good fortune in land and house when it shall please the Lord to take her parents to himself; with eyes like poor Molly's for beauty, a colour that comes and goes on a milk-white skin, and as pretty a mouth--, 'Why, Mr Manning, what fair lady are you describing?' asked Mr Holdsworth, who had come quickly and suddenly upon our tête-à-tête, and had caught my father's last words as he entered the room. Both my father and I felt rather abashed; it was such an odd subject for us to be talking about; but my father, like a straightforward simple man as he was, spoke out the truth.
'I've been telling Paul of Ellison's offer, and saying how good an opening it made for him--'
'I wish I'd as good,' said Mr Holdsworth. 'But has the business a "pretty mouth"?
'You're always so full of your joking, Mr Holdsworth,' said my father.
'I was going to say that if he and his cousin Phillis Holman liked to make it up between them, I would put no spoke in the wheel.'
'Phillis Holman!' said Mr Holdsworth. 'Is she the daughter of the minister-farmer out at Heathbridge? Have I been helping on the course of true love by letting you go there so often? I knew nothing of it.'
'There is nothing to know,' said I, more annoyed than I chose to show.
'There is no more true love in the case than may be between the first brother and sister you may choose to meet. I have been telling father she would never think of me; she's a great deal taller and cleverer; and I'd rather be taller and more learned than my wife when I have one.'
'And it is she, then, that has the pretty mouth your father spoke about?
I should think that would be an antidote to the cleverness and learning.
But I ought to apologize for breaking in upon your last night; I came upon business to your father.'
And then he and my father began to talk about many things that had no interest for me just then, and I began to go over again my conversation with my father. The more I thought about it, the more I felt that I had spoken truly about my feelings towards Phillis Holman. I loved her dearly as a sister, but I could never fancy her as my wife. Still less could I think of her ever--yes, condescending, that is the word--condescending to marry me. I was roused from a reverie on what I should like my possible wife to be, by hearing my father's warm praise of the minister, as a most unusual character; how they had got back from the diameter of driving-wheels to the subject of the Holmans I could never tell; but I saw that my father's weighty praises were exciting some curiosity in Mr Holdsworth's mind; indeed, he said, almost in a voice of reproach,--'Why, Paul, you never told me what kind of a fellow this minister-cousin of yours was!'
'I don't know that I found out, sir,' said I. 'But if I had, I don't think you'd have listened to me, as you have done to my father.'
'No! most likely not, old fellow,' replied Mr Holdsworth, laughing.
And again and afresh I saw what a handsome pleasant clear face his was; and though this evening I had been a bit put out with him--through his sudden coming, and his having heard my father's open-hearted confidence--my hero resumed all his empire over me by his bright merry laugh.
And if he had not resumed his old place that night, he would have done so the next day, when, after my father's departure, Mr Holdsworth spoke about him with such just respect for his character, such ungrudging admiration of his great mechanical genius, that I was compelled to say, almost unawares,--'Thank you, sir. I am very much obliged to you.'
'Oh, you're not at all. I am only speaking the truth. Here's a Birmingham workman, self-educated, one may say--having never associated with stimulating minds, or had what advantages travel and contact with the world may be supposed to afford--working out his own thoughts into steel and iron, making a scientific name for himself--a fortune, if it pleases him to work for money--and keeping his singleness of heart, his perfect simplicity of manner; it puts me out of patience to think of my expensive schooling, my travels hither and thither, my heaps of scientific books, and I have done nothing to speak of. But it's evidently good blood; there's that Mr Holman, that cousin of yours, made of the same stuff' 'But he's only cousin because he married my mother's second cousin,' said I.
'That knocks a pretty theory on the head, and twice over, too. I should like to make Holman's acquaintance.'
'I am sure they would be so glad to see you at Hope Farm,' said I, eagerly.
'In fact, they've asked me to bring you several times: only I thought you would find it dull.'
