ly it
isn't that I don't appreciate what you have done; I simply can't
understand why any one should want the things you consider essential.
Why, for instance, are you so anxious for me to be married?"

"Because it is natural at this time in your life, Merry." Mrs. Thatcher
was determined to have no quarrel, in spite of what she considered just
provocation. "It is a mother's duty to advise her daughter when she sees
her on the verge of a mistake."

"Suppose I felt that I didn't care to marry, Momsie, that I should be
happier to go through life expressing my own individuality?"

"Don't let us get started on that," Marian protested. "You know how
little patience I have with feminism in any form. I do wish we might
discuss some subject in a normal way as other mothers and daughters do,
Merry," she continued, softening. "I have your interests on my mind all
the time, I want to help you to understand yourself and life, I love you
so, dear child,--and yet, whenever we try to talk anything over, it
always turns into an argument. What I have suggested to-day I have
thought of for months, I have considered it from every standpoint before
presenting it to you, but you give me no credit for that. Before you
even know how you feel about it you are ready to dismiss it. I really
think my efforts for your happiness are entitled to more consideration."

"You think this would be for Mr. Hamlen's happiness too?" Merry asked
soberly.

"I am sure of it," Marian replied, seeming to see a sign of yielding in
the girl's question.

"Why hasn't he spoken to me himself?" Merry asked at length.

"He will speak, of course; but to meet with another disappointment would
undo all the advance he has made."

"I can't think of Mr. Hamlen as a married man," Merry continued; "I
can't believe that he would be happy under conditions changed from what
they are now. If he could only go on living with Mr. Huntington--"

"That is out of the question, of course," Mrs. Thatcher answered. "Mr.
Huntington has accomplished a miracle in bringing him out of his old
obsession, and if it were possible to surround him now with normal
conditions there is no limit to the heights he might reach."

"Has he told you that he cared for me?"

"Not in so many words," her mother admitted; "that is scarcely to be
expected. I understand him so much better than he does himself. He
disparages his abilities, which is not a bad characteristic in a
husband, and without some