ACTING FOR THE BEST





I HAVE no patience with people who talk that kind of nonsense about
marrying for love and the like. For my part I don't know what they
mean, and I don't believe they know it themselves. It's only a sort
of fashion of talking. I never could see what there was to like in
one young man more than another, only, of course, you might favour
some more than others if they was better to do.

My cousin Mattie was different. She must set up to be in love, and
walk home from church with Jack Halibut Sunday after Sunday, the
long way round, if you please, through the meadows; and he used to
buy her scent and ribbons at the fair, and send her a big valentine
of lacepaper, and satin ribbons and things, though Lord knows where
he got the money from--honest, I hope--for he hadn't a penny to
bless himself with.

When my uncle found out all this nonsense, being a man of proper
spirit, he put his foot down, and says he--

'Mattie, my girl, I would be the last to say anything against any
young man you fancied, especially a decent chap like young Halibut,
if his prospects was anything like as good as could be expected, but
you can't pretend poor Jack's are, him being but a blacksmith's man,
and not in regular work even. Now, let's have no waterworks,' he