Otherwise she'd
have thrown it all up. It has dragged on since she was eighteen: she
became engaged to him before he went abroad to study. It was one of
those very young and perfectly needless blunders that parents in America
might make so much less possible than they do. The thing is to insist on
one's daughter waiting, on the engagement's being long; and then, after
you've got that started, to take it on every occasion as little seriously
as possible--to make it die out. You can easily tire it to death," Mrs.
Nettlepoint competently stated. "However," she concluded, "Mr.
Porterfield has taken this one seriously for some years. He has done his
part to keep it alive. She says he adores her."
"His part? Surely his part would have been to marry her by this time."
"He has really no money." My friend was even more confidently able to
report it than I had been.
"He ought to have got some, in seven years," I audibly reflected.
"So I think she thinks. There are some sorts of helplessness that are
contemptible. However, a small difference has taken place. That's why
he won't wait any longer. His mother has come out, she has something--a
little--and she's able to assist him. She'll live with them and bear
some of the expenses, and after her death the son will have what there
is.
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