“Well,” my neighbor owned, “I don’t know but it’s that kind of shyness in them both.  I suppose one likes to think his girl looks like him, but doesn’t mind her being like her mother.  I’m glad she’s got my constitution, though.  My eldest daughter is more like her grandmother in looks, and I guess she’s got her disposition too, more.  I don’t know,” he said, vaguely, “what the last one is going to be like.  She seems to be more worldly.  But,” he resumed, strenuously, as if the remembrance of old opposition remained in his nerves, “when it came to this going off to school, or college, or whatever, I put my foot down, and kept it down.  I guess her mother was willing enough to do my way, but her sister was all for some of those colleges where girls are educated with other girls and not with young men.  She said they were more ladylike, and a lot more stuff and nonsense, and were more likely to be fit for society.  She said this one would meet a lot of jays, and very likely fall in love with one; and when we first heard of this affair of Peggy’s I don’t believe but what her sister got more satisfaction out of it than I did.  She’s quick enough!  And a woman likes to feel that she’s a prophetess at any time of her life.  That’s about all that seems to keep some of them going when they get old.”  I knew that here he had his mother-in-law rather than his daughter in mind, and I didn’t interrupt the sarcastic silence into which he fell.  “You’ve never met the young man, I believe?” he asked, at quite another point, and to the negation of my look he added, “To be sure!  We’ve hardly met him ourselves; he’s only been here once; but you’ll see him—­you and Mrs. Temple.  Well!” He lifted his head, as if he were going away, but he did not lift his arms from the fence, and so I knew that he had not emptied the bag of his unexpected confidences; I did not know why he was making them to me, but I liked him the better for them, and tried to feel that I was worthy of them.  He began with a laugh, “They both paid it into me so,” and now I knew that he meant his eldest daughter as well as her grandmother, “that my wife turned round and took my part, and said it was the very best thing that could happen; and she used all the arguments that I had used with her, when she had her misgivings about it, and she didn’t leave them a word to say.  A curious thing about it was, that though my arguments seemed to convince them, they didn’t convince me.  Ever notice, how when another person repeats what you’ve said, it sounds kind of weak and foolish?” I owned that my reasons had at times some such way of turning against me from the mouths of others, and he went on:  “But they seemed to silence her own misgivings, and she’s been enthusiastic for the engagement ever since.  What’s the reason,” he asked, “why a man, if he’s any way impetuous, wants to back out of a situation just about the time a woman has got set in it like the everlasting hills?  Is it because she feels the need of holding fast for both, or is it because she knows she hasn’t the strength to keep to her conclusion, if she wavers at all, while a man can let himself play back and forth, and still stay put.”