Pamela held herself upright and rigid as she asked the question. She held her mother’s hand fast, and kept stroking it in an intermittent way. When she had finished she gave her an appealing look--a look which did not ask advice. It was not advice she wanted, poor child: she wanted to be told to do what she longed to do--to be assured that that was the best; therefore she looked not like a creature wavering between two opinions, but like a culprit at the bar, awaiting her sentence. As for Mrs. Preston, she only shook her head.
“It would not do any good,” she said. “You might give him up over and over, but you would never get him to give you up, Pamela. He is that sort of a young man; he would not have taken a refusal from me. It would be of no use, my dear.”
“Are you sure?--are you quite sure?” cried Pamela, throwing her arms round her mother’s neck, and giving her a shower of kisses. “Oh you dear, dear mamma. Are you sure, you are quite sure?”
“You are kissing me for his sake,” said Mrs. Preston, with a little pang; and then she smiled at herself. “I never was jealous before,” she said. “I don’t mean to be jealous. No, he will never give in, Pamela; we shall have to make the best of it; and perhaps,” she continued, after a pause, “perhaps this was the friend I was always praying for to take care of my child before I die.”
“Oh, mamma,” said Pamela, “how can you talk of dying at such a time as this? when, perhaps, we’re going to have--every thing we want in the world; when, perhaps, we are going to be--as happy as the day is long!” she said, once more kissing the worn old face which lay turned toward her, in a kind of sweet enthusiasm. The one looked so young and the other so old; the one so sure of life and happiness, the other so nearly done with both. Mrs. Preston took the kiss and the clasp, and smiled at her radiant child; and then she closed her eyes, and retreated into her headache. _She_ was not going to have every thing she wanted in the world, or to be as happy as the day was long; so she retreated and took to her handy domestic little malady. The child could not conceive that there were still a thousand things to be thought over, and difficulties without number to be overcome.