I can fish and shoot and ride with any man in the county, and bluster folks into doing what I want them to mostly, if I keep my temper; and as for you--you know what you can do in the way of fine stitching, and punch-making, and house-keeping, and you and I together have got the best, and the handsomest, and the most blessed"-- the Squire's voice broke--"daughter in the county, by the Lord Harry we have.

I can shoot any man who looks askance at her, I can lie down in the mud for her to walk over to keep her little shoes dry, and you can fix her pretty gowns and keep her curls smooth, and watch her lest she breathe too fast or too slow of a night, but there we've got to stop.
You can't make the posies in your garden any color you have a mind, my girl, and I can't change the spots on the trout I land.

We can't, either of us, make a sunset, or a rainbow, or stop a thunder-storm, or raise an east wind.

There are things we run up blind against, and I reckon this is one of 'em.

It's got to come out the way it will, and you and I can't hinder it, Abigail." "We can hinder that poor boy from having his heart broken." The Squire whistled.