it was thus first spoken about by my father. He
saw my confusion, and half smiling said,--

'Well, lad, what dost say to the old father's plans? Thou art but
young, to be sure; but when I was thy age, I would ha' given my right
hand if I might ha' thought of the chance of wedding the lass I cared
for--'

'My mother?' asked I, a little struck by the change of his tone of
voice.

'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.'

'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.

'Well,' said he, after a pause. 'It's but a few days I've been thinking
of it, but I'd got as fond of my notion as if it had been a new engine
as I'd been planning out. Here's our Paul, thinks I to myself, a good
sensible breed o' lad, as has never vexed or troubled his mother or me;
with a good business opening out before him, age ninetee