marriages prearranged in
just this way? Surely, this was far better as a preparation for wedded
life than was the sudden, feverish courtship which rushed at
express-train speed and clatter from the first introduction of two
strangers to the final irrevocable words before the altar. Mrs.
Brenton's own experience had taught her that acquaintance should come
before one's marriage, not wait till after.

All in all, the more she thought about it, Mrs. Brenton favoured
Catie's somewhat premature announcement of her plans. Despite his
heritage of sturdy parson blood, Mrs. Brenton confessed to herself that
Scott might easily become a little erratic now and then, might let go
his hold upon the one thing needful in order to gratify his curiosity
concerning the touch of less essential, more alluring trifles. He
needed the steady, sturdy influence of some one outside himself to keep
him always in the beaten tracks. Already, for better or for worse,
Catie's influence upon him was a strong one; stronger, Mrs. Brenton
admitted to herself with a woful little sigh, than that of his own
mother, despite the ill-concealed anxiety and the doting love that only
a mother can give, and then only to an only son. Between the two of
them, herself and Catie, Catie's will was the stronger law. Catie, if
she chose, could keep Scott's feet well in the limits of the beaten
trails. It should be her duty to impress on Catie's girlish mind that
the beaten trail was the only one for him to follow, the path of
expediency as well as the path of holiness; that complete contentment
and success lay only at its other end.

Accordingly, Mrs. Brenton took it upon her shoulders to play the part
of Providence for those two young children: Scott and Catie. To Scott,
she pointed out Catie as the girl best worth his attention and his
comradeship, the while, with the other hand, she still held up before
him the picture she had so long ago created, the picture of himself,
child of the preaching race of Wheelers, proclaiming the gospel to all
men and some heathen. Side by side she placed them: the world-given
wife, the heaven-offered career. Moreover, she was so far the artist
that she was able to shift her lights and shades to fall now upon the
one and now upon the other, according as Scott's interest in one or
other of them appeared to her to wane. Her quick-sighted mother love
was prompt to warn her of that waning, prompt to make her understand
that, to a boy like S