“Yet it is certainly for a great event in her life,” replied Lucy. “Of course, I feel that in her place I should have acted differently. For one thing, I hate secrecy, and if Pollie had told me of her future intentions the moment they were decided (as I told her of mine), and had not resolved to make the great jump at a moment’s notice, as it were, without any reference to us, then I think there might have been very little trouble in the adjusting of our interests. She might have seen me well over my sorrows and difficulties without much hindrance of her own happiness.” Mrs. Brand broke into explosions of merriment. “Pollie and her future intentions!” she echoed. “I daresay she met the man only the week before! With these people, we waste our judgments in quite wrong directions.” “Pollie told me she had known the man for years,” said Lucy. “Oh, they always say that,” returned Mrs. Brand. “Their ‘knowing’ means that they have seen the man in the street, or in some shop, or, at best, at their chapel. Pollie was a great hand at chapel-going. I always thought there was something at the bottom of it. Then as for her ‘happiness,’ if these girls knew what was good for them, they wouldn’t marry at all. In less than a year’s time, she will wish she hadn’t. Very likely she will come and tell you so. She will come with a black eye, and a baby in her arms, and she will own she would be glad to come back to you, if it wasn’t for that baby! That has happened to me more than once.” “Flo, Flo,” cried Lucy, her own heart soft with tender remembrance of her absent husband, “do you think that nobody can be loving and happy save the wealthy and leisurely?” “I’m not blaming the poor wretches, I’m sure,” Flo defended herself. “If Jem and I had to live in one room, I should not wonder much if he beat me sometimes. He’s cross enough often; but then I can leave him to himself. What would he get like, fancy, if he saw me worn out with cleaning up and nursing, and dressed in rags? When all that comes in at the door, love goes out at the window. Pollie will soon find there is a great difference between workaday reality and the courting times of her evenings out and bank holidays.” “Well, the love that cannot sustain any conditions that life imposes, has never been love at all. So it is not much loss when it goes!” said Lucy, with an indignant note in her voice. She felt keenly how her own position looked in such eyes as those of Florence and Jem Brand.