How can I go
back to my tiresome boys and my old friends?"
"Ah, I don't want to do THAT!" said Maud. "I won't be a hindrance;
you must just hang me up like a bird in a cage--that's what I am--
to sing to you when you are at leisure."
XXIII
THE WEDDING
The way in which the people at Windlow took the news was very
characteristic. Howard frankly did not care how they regarded it.
Mr. Sandys was frankly and hugely delighted. He apologised to
Howard for having mentioned the subject of Guthrie to him.
"The way you took it, Howard," he said, "was a perfect model of
delicacy and highmindedness! Why, if I had dreamed that you cared
for my little girl, I would have said, and truly said, that the
dearest wish of my heart had been fulfilled. But one is blind, a
parent is blind; and I had somehow imagined you as too sedate, as
altogether too much advanced in thought and experience, for such a
thing. I would rather have bitten out my tongue than spoken as I
did to you. It is exactly what my dear girl needs, some one who is
older and wiser than herself--she needs some one to look up to, to
revere; she is thoughtful and anxious beyond her years, and she is
made to repose confidence in a mind more mature. I do not deny, of
course, that your position at Windlow makes the arrangement a still
more comfortable one; but I have always said that my children must
marry whom they would; and I should have welcomed you, my dear
Howard, as a son-in-law, under any circumstances.
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