And yet, here she was living with a man on terms of equality whom, when measured up with the standards she was accustomed to, failed impossibly. And yet, did he? That is, did he, in the larger sense? That he was woefully deficient in all the little niceties of life, that he was illiterate and ignorant could not be denied. But he was no man's fool, and, as far as his light shone, he certainly lived up to it. That was just it. He had a standard of his own.
She compared him with her brother, and with other men she had known and respected. Was he less honest? less brave? less independent? less scrupulous in his dealings with his fellowmen? To all these questions she was obliged to answer "No." And he was proud, too, and ambitious; ambitious to carve out a fortune with his own hands, beholden to neither man nor circumstances for the achievement. Certainly there was much that was fine about him.
And, as far as his treatment of herself was concerned, after that first terrible struggle for mastery, she had had nothing to complain of. He had been patient with her ignorance and her lack of capabilities in all the things that the women in this new life were so proficient in. Did she not, perhaps, fall as far below _his_ standard as he did before hers? There was certainly something to be said on both sides.
There was one quality which he possessed to which she paid ungrudging tribute; never had she met a man so free from all petty pretense. He regretted his lack of opportunities for educating himself, but it apparently never entered his head to pretend a knowledge of even the simplest subject which he did not possess. The questions that he asked her from time to time about matters which almost any schoolboy in England could have answered, both touched and embarrassed her.
At first she had found the evenings the most trying part of the day. When not taken up with her household cares, she found herself becoming absurdly self-conscious in his society. They were neither of them naturally silent people, and it was difficult not to have the air of "talking down" to him, of palpably making conversation. Beyond the people at her brother's and the Sharps, they had not a single acquaintance in common. Her horizon, hitherto, had been, bounded by England, his by Canada.