And
parents, who say less and understand better, suffer, perhaps, more. "To
bear, to rear, to lose," is the order of family history, generally
unexpected, always recurring.
But true love is not selfish. In time it accustoms itself to anything
which secures happiness for its object. Dr. Carr did confide to Katy in a
moment of private explosion that he wished the Great West had never been
invented, and that such a prohibitory tax could be laid upon young
Englishmen as to make it impossible that another one should ever be landed
on our shores; but he had never in his life refused Clover anything upon
which she had set her heart, and he saw in her eyes that her heart was
very much set on this. John and Elsie scolded and cried, and then in time
began to talk of their future visits to High Valley till they grew to
anticipate them, and be rather in a hurry for them to begin. Geoff's
arrival completed their conversion.
"Nicer than Ned," Johnnie pronounced him; and even Dr. Carr was forced to
confess that the sons-in-law with which Fate had provided him were of a
superior sort; only he wished that they didn't want to marry _his_ girls!
Phil, from first to last, was in favor of the plan, and a firm ally to the
lovers. He had grown extremely Western in his ideas, and was persuaded in
his mind that "this old East," as he termed it, with its puny
possibilities, did not amount to much, and that as soon as he was old
enough to shape his own destinies, he should return to the only section of
the country worthy the attention of a young man of parts.
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