"And you've told him the truth, like a woman, and he's heard it like a
man?"

"I've told him it must be given up. Oh, it was hard, auntie!"

"You needn't worry. You've done just the rightest thing you could do."

"But it seems so selfish. As if my happiness were of so much more
consequence than his. I've made him so miserable, I'm afraid!"

"Miss Sampson!" cried Aunt Faith, with all her old oddity and
suddenness, "just tell this girl, if you know, what kind of a
commandment a woman breaks, if she can't make up her mind to marry the
first man that asks her! 'Tain't in _my_ Decalogue!"

"I can't tell what commandment she won't be likely to break, if she
isn't pretty sure of her own mind before she _does_ marry!" said Miss
Sampson, energetically. "Talk of making a man miserable! Supposing you
do for a little while? 'Twon't last long. Right's right, and settles
itself. Wrong never does. And there isn't a greater wrong than to marry
the wrong man. To him as well as to you. And it won't end there--that's
the worst of it. There's more concerned than just yourself and him;
though you mayn't know how, or who. It's an awful thing to tangle up and
disarrange the plans of Providence. And more of it's done, I verily
believe, in this matter of marrying, than any other way. It's like
mismatching anything else--gloves or stockings--and wearing the wrong
ones together. They don't fit; and more'n that, it spoils another pair.
I believe, as true as I live, if the angels ever do cry over this
miserable world, it's when they see the souls they have paired off, all
right, out of heaven, getting mixed up and mismated as they do down
here! Why, it's fairly enough to account for all the sin and misery
there is in the world! If it wasn't for Adam and Eve and Cain, I should
think it did!"

"But it's very hard," said Faith, smiling, despite all her saddening
thoughts, at the characteristic harangue, "always to know wrong from
right. People may make mistakes, if they mean ever so well."

"Yes, awful mistakes! There's that poor, unfortunate woman in the Bible.
I never thought the Lord meant any reflection by what he said--on her.
She'd had six husbands. And he knew she hadn't got what she bargained
for, after all. Most likely she never had, in the whole six. And if
things had got into such a snarl as that eighteen hundred years ago, how
many people, do you think, by this time, are right enough in themselves
to be right for anybody? I've thou