"If anyone ever dares call her a summer girl," said Mr. Kindred promptly, "I'll knock him down quicker than he ever had it done before."
"Hands off! I'll not call her so," said Mr. Erskine, laughing. "She is an everyday girl, and better each time. But Magnus, suppose _your_ best girl happens to be also on hand?"
"She never is, sir. She has not been at the Point since I went there."
"Hard on you, if she went there before; you speak as if she were a fixed fact. Do you know, Magnus, I am rather sorry to hear that."
"Why, sir?" demanded Magnus, noting the pulsating colour in the fair face bent over the needlework.
"Well, when I thought of it, I hoped you would keep clear of all such entanglements till you knew what you wanted."
"Oh, of course! I beg pardon; I should have said till you had seen a little more of the world."
"Do you think the world is the place to choose, sir?"
"I have only an old matchlock," he said, "and cannot cope with you young sharpshooters. But my boy, what I meant was this. When the boy goes off to college and grows into new mental strength and riches, and the girl stays at home and gets not half a chance, poor child, to do anything but wash dishes or (now do not glower at me) perhaps does not wish for higher things, then the man comes home raised to a plane where she is not fitted to stand by his side, and she can never be the helpmeet for him that she should."
Magnus listened respectfully; watching that lovely, flitting colour, it was not hard to sit still.
"You think," he said, "that some girls wouldn't amount to much at a one-company post. When a man was hard up for comrades?"
"Not unless they were 'best girls' in truth."
"Oh, well, mine is," said Magnus confidently, "the very bestest sort. I don't know how much she knows--but if I stay at the Academy two years longer I shall have a stuffed head, full enough to lend on every occasion. Besides, it's not needful for a man's peace of mind that his wife should understand wave motion, is it, sir?"
Mr. Erskine laughed at him, and Cherry laughed too, though now colouring furiously.
"I suppose it is not needful," her father said, not noticing her, "unless in practice. Well, I hope it will turn out all right for you. I had a friend, Magnus, who got entangled, as I call it, very early, went away to college, and when he came back with all his honours, his mother forbade the bans on that distinct plea; she said the girl was too ignorant. I think my friend would have gone straight on through it all, but the girl was not of that sort. She refused to enter any family by the side door. So they waited, the engagement was virtually broken, and years went by. Then the mother died, the man sought his old love and married her. But Magnus, the girl had spent those years not in lamenting, not in flirting, but in solid, hard study. So that when at last they went forth in life together she had passed him, and was the better educated of the two."