Cousin Phillis by Elizabeth Gaskell Read Free Book Online Page B

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 nineteen, not so
bad-looking, though perhaps not to call handsome, and here's his
cousin, not too near cousin, but just nice, as one may say; aged
seventeen, good and true, and well brought up to work with her hands as
well as her head; a scholar—but that can't be helped, and is more her
misfortune than her fault, seeing she is the only child of scholar—and
as I said afore, once she's a wife and a she'll forget it all, I'll be
bound—with a good fortune in land and house when it shall please the
Lord to take her parents to himself; with eyes like poor Molly's for
beauty, a colour that comes and goes on a milk-white skin, and as
pretty a mouth—,
    'Why, Mr Manning, what fair lady are you describing?' asked Mr
Holdsworth, who had come quickly and suddenly upon our tete-a-tete, and
had caught my father's last words as he entered the room. Both my
father and I felt rather abashed; it was such an odd subject for us to
be talking about; but my father, like a straightforward simple man as
he was, spoke out the truth.
    'I've been telling Paul of Ellison's offer, and saying how good an
opening it made for him—'
    'I wish I'd as good,' said Mr Holdsworth. 'But has the business a
"pretty mouth"?
    'You're always so full of your joking, Mr Holdsworth,' said my father.
'I was going to say that if he and his cousin Phillis Holman liked to
make it up between them, I would put no spoke in the wheel.'
    'Phillis Holman!' said Mr Holdsworth. 'Is she the daughter of the
minister-farmer out at Heathbridge? Have I been helping on the course
of true love by letting you go there so often? I knew nothing of it.'
    'There is nothing to know,' said I, more annoyed than I chose to show.
'There is no more true love in the case than may be between the first
brother and sister you may choose to meet. I have been telling father
she would never think of me; she's a great deal taller and cleverer;
and I'd rather be taller and more learned than my wife when I have one.'
    'And it is she, then, that has the pretty mouth your father spoke
about? I should think that would be an antidote to the cleverness and
learning. But I ought to apologize for breaking in upon your last
night; I came upon business to your father.'
    And then he and my father began to talk about many things that had no
interest for me just then, and I began to go over again my conversation
with my father. The more I thought about it, the more I felt that I had
spoken truly about my feelings towards Phillis Holman. I loved her
dearly as a sister, but I could never fancy her as my wife. Still less
could I think of her ever—yes, condescending, that is the
word—condescending to marry me. I was roused from a reverie on what I
should like my possible wife to be, by hearing my father's warm praise
of the minister, as a most unusual character; how they had got back
from the diameter of driving-wheels to the subject of the Holmans I
could never tell; but I saw that my father's weighty praises were
exciting some curiosity in Mr Holdsworth's mind; indeed, he said,
almost in a voice of