For a minute or so the boy and girl stood opposite her, holding fast by one another, and staring with all their eyes; but they said nothing more, being apparently very "good" children, that is, children brought up under the old-fashioned rules, which are indicated in the celebrated rhyme, _"Come when you're called, Do as you're bid: Shut the door after you, And you'll never be chid."_ Therefore, on being told to sit down, they gravely took their places on the sofa, and continued to stare.
The father and bridegroom looked on, silent as they.

What could he say or do?
It was the natural and necessary opening up of that vexed question--second marriages, concerning which moralists, sentimentalists, and practical people argue forever, and never come to any conclusion.

Of course not, because each separate case should decide itself.

The only universal rule or law, if there be one, is that which applies equally to the love before marriage; that as to a complete, mutual first love, any after love is neither likely, necessary, nor desirable; so, to anyone who has known a perfect first marriage--the whole satisfaction of every requirement of heart and soul and human affection--unto such, a second marriage, like a second love, would be neither right nor wrong, advisable nor unadvisable, but simply impossible.
What could he do--the father who had just given his children a new mother, they being old enough not only to understand this, but previously taught; as most people are so fatally ready to teach children, the usual doctrine about step-mothers, and also quite ready to rebel against the same?
The step-mother likewise, what could she do, even had she recognized and felt all that the children's behavior implied?
Alas! (I say "alas!" for this was as sad a thing as the other) she did not recognize it.

She scarcely noticed it at all.