"And you think that I shall never try to make good anything, Mary. It
is not generous to believe the worst of a man. When you have got any
power over him, I think you might try and use it to make him better;
but that is what you never do. However, I'm going," Fred ended,
languidly. "I shall never speak to you about anything again. I'm very
sorry for all the trouble I've caused--that's all."
Mary had dropped her work out of her hand and looked up. There is
often something maternal even in a girlish love, and Mary's hard
experience had wrought her nature to an impressibility very different
from that hard slight thing which we call girlishness. At Fred's last
words she felt an instantaneous pang, something like what a mother
feels at the imagined sobs or cries of her naughty truant child, which
may lose itself and get harm. And when, looking up, her eyes met his
dull despairing glance, her pity for him surmounted her anger and all
her other anxieties.
"Oh, Fred, how ill you look! Sit down a moment. Don't go yet. Let me
tell uncle that you are here. He has been wondering that he has not
seen you for a whole week." Mary spoke hurriedly, saying the words
that came first without knowing very well what they were, but saying
them in a half-soothing half-beseeching tone, and rising as if to go
away to Mr. Featherstone. Of course Fred felt as if the clouds had
parted and a gleam had come: he moved and stood in her way.
"Say one word, Mary, and I will do anything. Say you will not think
the worst of me--will not give me up altogether."
"As if it were any pleasure to me to think ill of you," said Mary, in a
mournful tone. "As if it were not very painful to me to see you an
idle frivolous creature. How can you bear to be so contemptible, when
others are working and striving, and there are so many things to be
done--how can you bear to be fit for nothing in the world that is
useful? And with so much good in your disposition, Fred,--you might
be worth a great deal."
"I will try to be anything you like, Mary, if you will say that you
love me."
"I should be ashamed to say that I loved a man who must always be
hanging on others, and reckoning on what they would do for him. What
will you be when you are forty? Like Mr. Bowyer, I suppose--just as
idle, living in Mrs. Beck's front parlor--fat and shabby, hoping
somebody will invite you to dinner--spending your morning in learning a
comic song--oh no! learning a tune on the flute."