50 COUSIN PHILLIS
ha' been glad to ha' known it, poor Molly; but I had to leave tbe place where we lived for to try to earn my bread — and I meant to come back — but before ever I did, she was dead and gone: I ha' never gone there since. But if you fancy Phillis Holman, and can get her to fancy you, my lad, it shall go different with you, Paul, to what it did with your father."
I took counsel with myself very rapidly, and I came to a clear conclusion.
"Father," said I, "if I fancied Phillis ever so much, she would never fancy me. I like her as much as I could like a sister; and she likes me as if I were her brother — her younger brother."
I could see my father's countenance fall a little.
"You see she's so clever — she's more like a man than a woman — she knows Latin and Greek."
"She'd forget 'em, if she'd a houseful of children," was my father's comment on this.
"But she knows many a thing besides, and is wise as well as learned; she has been so much with her father. She would never think much of me, and I should like my wife to think a deal of her husband."
"It is not just book-learning or the want of it as makes a wife think much or little of her husband," replied my father, evidently unwilling to give up a project which had taken deep root in his mind." It's a something — I don't rightly know how to call it — if he's manly, and sensible, and straightforward; and I reckon you're that, my boy."
"I don't think I should like to have a wife taller than I am, father," said I, smiling; he smiled too, but not heartily.
