I will except prejudiced persons, like his cousin and the lady
he is so bent on making, by hook or by crook, _a_ Mrs. Harshaw.
Mr. Harshaw the first (and last to arrive) has shaved his mustache quite
recently, I should say, and the nakedness of his upper lip is not becoming.
I wonder if she ever saw him with his mouth bare? I wonder if she would
have accepted him if she had? He was so funny about his cousin, the
promoter; so absolutely unconscious of his own asinine position. He argued
very sensibly that if, after waiting four years for him, she couldn't wait
one day longer, she must have changed in her feelings very decidedly, and
that was a fact it behooved him to find out. Better now than later. I think
he has found out.
Possibly he was nicer four years ago. Men get terribly down at heel,
mentally, morally, and mannerly, poking off by themselves in these
out-of-the-way places. But she has been seeing people and steadily making
growth since she gave him her promise at eighteen. The promise itself has
helped to develop her. It must have been a knot of perpetual doubt and
self-questioning. No one need tell me that she really loves him; if she
did, if she had, she could not take his treatment of her like this.
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