"Perhaps he won't be content with me."
"Even if you weren't what you are, my father would love you
because I love you. But I know my father as well as I know you;
and I know you are just the man it must make him happy afresh,
even in heaven, to think of his Mary marrying. You two can hardly
be of two minds in anything!"
"That was a curious speech of Letty's yesterday! You heard her
say, did you not, that, if everybody was to be so very good in
heaven, she was afraid it would be rather dull?"
"We mustn't make too much of what Letty says, either when she's
merry or when she's miserable. She speaks both times only out of
half-way down."
"Yes, yes! I wasn't meaning to find any fault with her; I was
only wishing to hear what you would say. For nobody can make a
story without somebody wicked enough to set things wrong in it,
and then all the work lies in setting them right again, and, as
soon as they are set right, then the story stops."
"There's no thing of the sort in music, Joseph, and that makes
one happy enough."
"Yes, there is, Mary. There's strife and difference and
compensation and atonement and reconciliation."
"But there's nothing wicked."
"No, that there is not."
"Well!" said Mary, "perhaps it may only be because we know so
little about good, that it seems to us not enough. We know only
the beginnings and the fightings, and so write and talk only
about them.
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