They are half happy, half unhappy; but they have to be borne.
Younger sisters, till their own turns come, are apt to take a severe view of marriage plans, and to feel that they cruelly interrupt a past order of things which, so far as they are concerned, need no improvement.

And parents, who say less and understand better, suffer, perhaps, more.

"To bear, to rear, to lose," is the order of family history, generally unexpected, always recurring.
But true love is not selfish.

In time it accustoms itself to anything which secures happiness for its object.

Dr.Carr did confide to Katy in a moment of private explosion that he wished the Great West had never been invented, and that such a prohibitory tax could be laid upon young Englishmen as to make it impossible that another one should ever be landed on our shores; but he had never in his life refused Clover anything upon which she had set her heart, and he saw in her eyes that her heart was very much set on this.