Читать книгу Are Parents People? онлайн

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"But, father, suppose I should marry?"

Her father looked at her with startled eyes, as if she had suggested something unnatural and wrong.

"Marry!" he said. "I hope you have no such idea in your head."

She had not. Indeed her immunity from the crushes which occupied so much of the time and attention of her schoolmates occasioned her some concern. She feared her nature was a cold one. She disclaimed the idea of marriage, except as she had observed it in common.

"People do, you know," she said.

"A good many would be wiser if they didn't," said her father. "I am particularly opposed to young marriages."

He and her mother had married when they were young.

Presently she was obliged to tell him that she must go. He did not gainsay her decision, but she saw he took it as meaning that she had not really enjoyed herself. Yet when she tried to say she had—that she was sorry to leave him—it kept sounding as if she were saying it was a bore to go back and walk to the station with her mother. If only she could be loyal to one parent without being disloyal to the other!