girls can never, never unsay,
unless the men bid them. Now I'll tell you how malicious people will
view the present situation. They will say that I refused you point blank
when I thought we were well off, then got you to propose again, and
graciously accepted the proposal, when I knew we had not a penny in the
world. I own it looks very like it, and it is partly your fault; you
should not have let me go the first time. But I don't care what people
say, so long as there is not a word of truth in it."

"Nor I," said Tom undauntedly. "They may also say that I was able to
make myself useful to your family, and like a very tradesman, traded on
the usefulness, buying a reluctant bride with it. But what do we care
when we love each other, and God has given us to each other? 'They
say,'--what do they say? Let them say."

There was not the shadow of a cloud the size of a man's hand on Dr. and
Mrs. Millar's pleasure in their daughter Dora's marriage to Tom
Robinson. For instead of going with Annie to Africa, or starting on a
mission of her own to bring May's college fees from Jamaica, Dora
remained at Redcross to be Tom Robinson's dear wife and cherished
darling. Mrs. Millar had long seen, in her turn, that Dora could not do
better. The fine old shop, and the fantastic shade of poor Aunt Penny,
had both become of no account. The single thing which troubled Mrs.
Millar was that the instant Lady Mary Pemberton heard of the wedding in
prospect, she invited herself to come down to it.

Dora's sisters, with the charming inconsistency of young women, were not
only acquiescent in her undignified fate--they were jubilant over it.

It did not arrest, though it subdued the general congratulations, when
it was discovered that the event made Harry Ironside all at once both
envious and aggressive. He could not see why, if Dora Millar were
marrying a rich man, and he himself had a sufficient income not merely
to make a satisfactory settlement on his wife, but to do his part in
helping her relatives, who would also be his from the day he married
her, that his marriage should not take place as soon as Dora and Tom
Robinson's. In place of an indefinite engagement, with thousands of
miles of land and sea, and all the uncertainties of life into the
bargain, between him, Harry Ironside, and Annie Millar, would it not
be much better that he should carry away with him the brightest,
bravest woman who ever asked little from a new colony; who, in pl