But I don't
like to see the girl I--the girl I have known all her life, marry a man
that I feel sure will break her heart."
"Aunt Eleanor's heart is not broken!"
Derby walked up and down the floor, then stood still, stuffed his hands
into his pockets, and looked down at his shoes as though their varnish
were the only thing in life that interested him.
"Well? Is Aunt Eleanor's heart broken?"
"Perhaps not; but, even so, you and she are very different women. From
her girlhood she was more or less trained for the life she leads. She
went from a convent school to the house of a brother-in-law--in other
words, from one dependence to another. She is the type of woman who
weathers change and storm by bending to the wind."
"Aunt Eleanor! Hers is the strongest character I know!"
"Of course it is! But it is exactly because she is apparently
unresisting and pliant to surrounding conditions that her spirit is
unassailable. You, on the contrary, would snap in the first tempest! Or,
to change the simile, have you ever seen a young bull calf tied to a
tree, and, in a frantic effort to get loose, wind itself up tighter,
until its head was pulled close to the tree? That is exactly what you
would be over here. No girl has ever had her own way all her life more
than you! Believe me, you have no idea what it would mean to be tied to
a rope of convention that would tighten like a noose at any struggle on
your part.
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