126 PRÆTERITA-I

regarded with more respect by his Croydon cousin than is usually rendered by grown young women to their schoolboy friends.

Their frank, cousinly relation went on, however, without a thought on either side of any closer ties, until my father, at two or three and twenty, after various apprenticeship in London, was going finally to London to begin his career in his own business. By that time he had made up his mind that Margaret, though not the least an ideal heroine to him, was quite the best sort of person he could have for a wife, the rather as they were already so well used to each other; and in a quiet, but enough resolute way, asked her if she were of the same mind, and would wait until he had an independence to offer her. His early tutress consented with frankly confessed joy, not indeed in the Agnes Wickfield way, “I have loved you all my life,”¹ but feeling and admitting that it was great delight to be allowed to love him now. The relations between Grace Nugent and Lord Colambre in Miss Edgeworth’s Absentee extremely resemble those between my father and mother, except that Lord Colambre is a more eager lover. My father chose his wife much with the same kind of serenity and decision with which afterwards he chose his clerks.

146. A time of active and hopeful contentment for both the young people followed, my mother being perhaps the more deeply in love, while John depended more absolutely on her sympathy and wise friendship than is at all usual with young men of the present day in their relations with admired young ladies. But neither of them ever permitted their feelings to degenerate into fretful or impatient passion. My mother showed her affection chiefly in steady endeavour to cultivate her powers of mind, and form her manners, so as to fit herself to be the undespised companion of a man whom she considered much her superior: my father in unremitting attention to the business on the success of

¹ [David Copperfield, ch. lxii.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]