My dear,'
added Priscilla, pressing her sister's hand affectionately as they
walked side by side, 'you'll never be low when you've got a dairy.'
'Ah, Priscilla,' said Nancy, returning the pressure with a grateful
glance of her clear eyes, 'but it won't make up to Godfrey: a
dairy's not so much to a man. And it's only what he cares for that
ever makes me low. I'm contented with the blessings we have, if he
could be contented.'
'It drives me past patience,' said Priscilla, impetuously, 'that
way o' the men- always wanting and wanting, and never easy with what
they've got: they can't sit comfortable in their chairs when they've
neither ache nor pain, but either they must stick a pipe in their
mouths, to make 'em better than well, or else they must be
swallowing something strong, though they're forced to make haste
before the next meal comes in. But, joyful be it spoken, our father
was never that sort o' man. And if it had pleased God to make you
ugly, like me, so as the men wouldn't ha' run after you, we might have
kept to our own family, and had nothing to do with folks as have got
uneasy blood in their veins.'
'Oh, don't say so, Priscilla,' said Nancy, repenting that she had
called forth this outburst; 'nobody has any occasion to find fault
with Godfrey. It's natural he should be disappointed at not having any
children: every man likes to have somebody to work for and lay by for,
and he always counted so on making a fuss with 'em when they were
little.
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