Chapter 18 Standing Aside
Mrs. Burton was perplexed, and a good bit troubled in her mind. She was honestly proud of Katherine's beauty, and longed that her sister should have an easier life than she had had herself. So that when Jervis Ferrars had begun to show rather a decided inclination to cultivate Katherine's society, the elder sister had felt both glad and sorry because of it. She was glad, because any girl might have felt honoured by the notice of a man like Jervis Ferrars: But she was sorry because he was so poor, and marriage with him must mean for Katherine a life of hard work and much drudgery; for in remote places and pioneer settlements it was on the women, the wives and the mothers, that the real hardships of life fell.
Her own husband had been a poor man, a bright young
