My aunt,
believing in the cards, urged me to marry.
This difference of opinion produced a dispute between them, in the course
of which my aunt Chance--quite unconscious of having any superstitious
feelings of her own--actually set out the cards which prophesied
happiness to me in my married life, and asked my mother how anybody but "a
blinded heathen could be fule enough, after seeing those cairds, to
believe in a dream!" This was, naturally, too much for my mother's
patience; hard words followed on either side; Mrs. Chance returned in
dudgeon to her friends in Scotland. She left me a written statement of my
future prospects, as revealed by the cards, and with it an address at
which a post-office order would reach her. "The day was not that far off,"
she remarked, "when Francie might remember what he owed to his aunt
Chance, maintaining her ain unbleemished widowhood on thratty punds a
year."
Having refused to give her sanction to my marriage, my mother also refused
to be present at the wedding, or to visit Alicia afterwards. There was no
anger at the bottom of this conduct on her part. Believing as she did in
this Dream, she was simply in mortal fear of my wife. I understood this,
and I made allowances for her. Not a cross word passed between us. My one
happy remembrance now--though I did disobey her in the matter of my
marriage--is this: I loved and respected my good mother to the last.
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