as love.  And she don’t even know how to do plain sewing.  Only look at the bottoms of her dresses, with the braid hanging; and I know she never mends her stockings—­I had it from the woman who washes them.  Only think of my son, who has always had his stockings mended as smooth as satin, either going with holes in them, or else having them gathered up in hard bunches and getting corns.  I can’t and I won’t have it!”

Caroline finished all her remarks with that, setting her mouth hard.  It was evident that she was firm in her decision.  I suggested mildly that the girl had never been taught, and had always had so much money that she was excusable for not knowing how to do all these little things which the Linnville girls had been forced to do.

“I know all that,” said Caroline; “I am not blaming her so much as I am her mother.  She had better have stopped reading Browning and improving her own mind and the village, and improved her own daughter, so she could walk in the way Providence has set for a woman without disgracing herself.  But I am looking at her as she is, without any question of blame, for the sake of my son.  He shall not marry a girl who don’t know how to make his home comfortable any better than she does—­not if his mother can save him from it.”

Louisa asked timidly—­we were both of us rather timid, Caroline was so fierce—­if she did not think she could teach Harriet.

“I don’t know whether I can or not!” said Caroline.  “Anyway, I am not going to try.  What kind of a plan would it be for me to have her in the house teaching her, where Harry could see her every day, and perhaps after all find out that it would not amount to anything.  I’d rather try to cure drink than make a good housewife of a girl who hasn’t been brought up to it.  How do I know it’s in her?  And there I would have her right under Harry’s nose.  She shall never marry him; I can’t and I won’t have it.”

Louisa and I speculated as to whether Caroline would be able to help it, when she had taken her leave after what seemed to us must have been a most unsatisfactory call, with not enough sympathy from us to cheer her.

“Harry Liscom has a will, as well as his mother, and he is a man grown, and running the woollen factory on shares with his father, and able to support a wife.  I don’t believe he is going to stop, now the girl’s mother has consented, because his mother tells him to,” said Louisa; and I thought she was right.

That very evening Harry went past to the Jamesons, in his best suit, carrying a cane, which he swung with the assured air of a young man going courting where he is plainly welcome.

“I am glad for one thing,” said I, “and that is there is no more secret strolling in my grove, but open sitting up in her mother’s parlor.”

Louisa looked at me a little uncertainly, and I saw that there was something which she wanted to say and did not quite dare.