MARRYING OFF A MOTHER - Helen with the High Hand

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"She used to talk just like that of your grandfather," said James. "Susan always reckoned as she'd got more than her fair share of sense."

"I don't think she thinks that now," said Helen, calmly, as if to say: "At any rate I've cured her of _that_." Then she went on: "You see, Mr. Bratt had sold his farm--couldn't make it pay--and he was going out to Manitoba. He said he would stop in England. Mother said she wouldn't let him stop in England where he couldn't make a farm pay. She was quite right there," Helen admitted, with careful justice. "But then she said she wouldn't marry him and go out to Manitoba, because of leaving me alone here to look after myself! Can you imagine such a reason?"

James merely raised his head quickly several times. The gesture meant whatever Helen preferred that it should mean.

"The idea!" she continued. "As if I hadn't looked after mother and kept her in order, and myself, too, for several years! No. She wouldn't marry him and go out there! And she wouldn't marry him and stay here! She actually began to talk all the usual conventional sort of stuff, you know--about how she had no right to marry again, and she didn't believe in second marriages, and about her duty to me. And so on. You know. I reasoned with her--I explained to her that probably she had another thirty years to live. I told her she was quite young. She _is_. And why should she make herself permanently miserable, _and_ Mr. Bratt, _and_ me, merely out of a quite mistaken sense of duty? No use! I tried everything I could. No use!"

"She was too much for ye?"

"Oh, _no_!" said Helen, condescendingly. "I'd made up my _mind_. I arranged things with Mr. Bratt. He quite agreed with me. He took out a licence at the registrar's, and one Saturday morning--it had to be a Saturday, because I'm busy all the other days--I went out with mother to buy the meat and things for Sunday's dinner, and I got her into the registrar's office--and, well, there she was! Now, what do you think?"

"What?"

"Her last excuse was that she couldn't be married because she was wearing her third-best hat. Don't you think it's awfully funny?"

"That's as may be," said James. "When was all this?"

"Just recently," Helen answered. "They sailed from Glasgow last Thursday but two. And I'm expecting a letter by every post to say that they've arrived safely."

"And Susan's left you to take care of yourself!"

"Now, please don't begin talking like mother," Helen said, frigidly. "I've certainly got less to take care of now than I had. Mother quite saw that. But what difficulty I had in getting her off, even after I'd safely married her! I had to promise that if I felt lonely I'd go and join them. But I shan't."

"You won't?"

"No. I don't see myself on a farm in Manitoba. Do you?"

"I don't know as I do," said James, examining her appearance, with a constant increase of his pride in it. "So ye saw 'em off at Glasgow. I reckon she made a great fuss?"

		Music expresses that which can not be said and on which it is impossible to be silent Victor Hugo