THE CHILD IS THE MEANING
273
observed that James was a head shorter than Rebecca and the two
made an incongruous couple, and her mother, though she agreed that
this
observation was true, remarked that such things made littie
difference
in
the long run. Rebecca and James had met through the
mediation of a friend of the family, a man who had made a fortune
in dental supplies and who had told James that if he ever wanted to
get married again, he knew just the right girl for him, a girl who
had a fortune to bring as a dowry and who would make an excellent
wife, for she had made an excellent daughter as everyone knew.
James was interested in the dowry and he wanted to settle down
again. But he feared marriage because his first marriage had been
a humiliation. He visited Rebecca and was pleased with her and espe–
cially pleased by .the extraordinary dinners he was given, dinners
which Ruth Hart had labored from early morning to prepare. At these
dinners he held forth and explained his views on many subjects to
the Hart family, impressing everyone but Seymour, and impressing
Jasper more than anyone.
"Just big talk," said Seymour, who did not come to dinner but
heard about it from the bedroom where he had secluded himself.
The courtship continued for a full year. James took Rebecca
to plays and to the opera, he brought her his books to read, he made
much of young Jasper who had long wanted to know an intellectual
human being, although he was not yet acquainted with the ternt,
intellectual. Rebecca loved her nephew Jasper and she was touched
that he should be fascinated by James at the same time as she felt
that her sister's child, a good-looking and well-behaved boy, showed
James what kind of children she might have.
As
this courtship continued, Ruth and Sarah became impatient,
for James did not come to the point of asking Rebecca to marry
him, and after all, James was fifty if he was a day while Rebecca
was closer to forty than anyone really admitted.
If
she was to have
children, she ought to get married soon. James, however, was per–
fectly content to be a suitor and Rebecca glowed as never before,
excited by the many things that a courted girl did. When the couple
finally reached the stage of mild petting in the living room, Ruth
in the kitchen listened
Vlith
a mixture of pleasure and distaste. This
was what she wanted, she wanted her daughter to get married, but
t!he pair seemed a grotesque version of the romance of courtship
which Ruth believed in at sixty just as she had when a girl of sixteen.
And Seymour was displeased without any admixture of joy in his
sister's courtship. When Jasper sat with him in his bedroom one
