Page 375 - sons-and-lovers

what Annie wanted to get married for. He was fond of her,
and she of him. Still, he hoped rather lugubriously that it
would turn out all right. Arthur was astonishingly hand-
some in his scarlet and yellow, and he knew it well, but was
secretly ashamed of the uniform. Annie cried her eyes up in
the kitchen, on leaving her mother. Mrs. Morel cried a little,
then patted her on the back and said:
‘But don’t cry, child, he’ll be good to you.’
Morel stamped and said she was a fool to go and tie her-
self up. Leonard looked white and overwrought. Mrs. Morel
said to him:
‘I s’ll trust her to you, my lad, and hold you responsible
for her.’
‘You can,’ he said, nearly dead with the ordeal. And it
was all over.
When Morel and Arthur were in bed, Paul sat talking, as
he often did, with his mother.
‘You’re not sorry she’s married, mother, are you?’ he
asked.
‘I’m not sorry she’s married—but—it seems strange that
she should go from me. It even seems to me hard that she
can prefer to go with her Leonard. That’s how mothers are—
I know it’s silly.’
‘And shall you be miserable about her?’
‘When I think of my own wedding day,’ his mother an-
swered, ‘I can only hope her life will be different.’
‘But you can trust him to be good to her?’
‘Yes, yes. They say he’s not good enough for her. But I say
if a man is GENUINE, as he is, and a girl is fond of him—

Sons and Lovers