'No! not thy mother. Thy mother is a very good woman--none
better. No! the lass I cared for at nineteen ne'er knew how I
loved her, and a year or two after and she was dead, and ne'er
knew. I think she would ha' been glad to ha' known it, poor
Molly; but I had to leave the 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.'