It is difficult in any case for parents to realize how soon their children pass the bounds of childhood, and how soon, among other thoughts incident to maturity, love and marriage enter their heads. But there were good reasons why the Colonel and his wife should have fancied the governing passions and objects of ordinary lives had never risen above their son's horizon. They considered him perfectly incompetent to provide for the wants of the most frugal family, and they had forgotten that love takes no counsel from prudence. It was too late now to remember it.
The Colonel, after repeated clearings of his throat, taking off his spectacles, wiping and putting them on again, said, 'Are you _attached_ to Lina, my son?' He used the word in its prescriptive rustic sense.
'Strange I never mistrusted it!--How long have you been so, Loyd?'
'Ever since I was old enough to understand my feelings; but I did not, till very lately, know that I could not bear the thoughts of her becoming attached to another.'
'But surely you can _guess_, Loyd,' interrupted his mother.
'The sooner, my son, you both get over it the better, for there is no kind of a prospect for you.'
'My child,' said the good old man, gently laying his hand on the shoulder of his companion of fifty years, 'trust in Providence; our basket and store have been always full, and why should not our children's be? Loyd now does the business of the post-office; while I live they can share with us, and, when I am gone, it may so be, that the heart of the ruler will be so overruled, that the office will be continued to Loyd.'
Loyd, either anticipating his mother's opposing arguments, or himself impelled irresistibly to the argument of love, disappeared, and the old lady, who, it must be confessed, lived less by faith than her gentle spouse, replied:
'The office continued to Loyd! Who ever heard of old Jackson's heart being overruled to do what he had not a mind to?'
'Well, my dear, do hear me out; don't the loaves and fishes _all_ go on one side of the table?'
'Why, we have had our plates filled a pretty while, my dear.'
'Well, my dear, old Jackson could not take the bread and butter out of the mouth of a revolutionary officer.'
'I am sure he has proved that he _would_ not.'