"If he wasn't worth it she could have let him go. And the family! Think of
their accepting his proposal in silence. Why, can they even be married,
Henry, without some process of law?"

"Heaven knows! I don't know how far the other thing had gone--far enough to
make questions awkward."

Husband and wife remained seated side by side on the son's deserted bed.
The shape of each was disconsolately outlined to the other against the
tent's illumined walls. Now a wind-swayed branch of manzanita rasped the
canvas, and cast upon it shadows of its moving leaves.

"It's pretty rough on quiet old folks like us, with no money to get us into
trouble," said Mr. Thorne. "The boy is not a beauty, he's not a swell. He
is just a plain, honest boy with a good working education. If you judge a
woman, as some say you can, by her choice of men, she shouldn't be very far
out of the way."

"It is very certain you cannot judge a man by his choice of women."

"You cannot judge a boy by the women that get hold of him. But Willy is
not such a babe as you think. He's a deuced quiet sort, but he's not
been knocking around by himself these ten years, at school and college
and vacations, without picking up an idea or two--possibly about women.
Experience, I grant, be probably lacks; but he has the true-bred instinct.
We always have trusted him so far; I'm willing to trust him now. If there
are things he ought to know about this woman, leave him to find them out
for himself."

"After he has married her! And you don't even know whether a marriage is