The dreams of youth grow rank enough without such watering.
The prediction was always in my mind, alluring and tantalising as a teasing girl who puts her pretty face near yours, safe that you dare not kiss it.

What it said I mused on, what it said not I neglected.

I dedicated my idle hours to it, and, not appeased, it invaded my seasons of business.

Rather than seek my own path, I left myself to its will and hearkened for its whispered orders.
"It was the same," observed my mother sadly, "with a certain cook-maid of my sister's.

It was foretold that she should marry her master." "And did she not ?" cried the Vicar, with ears all pricked-up.
"She changed her service every year," said my mother, "seeking the likeliest man, until at last none would hire her." "She should have stayed in her first service," said the Vicar, shaking his head.
"But her first master had a wife," retorted my mother triumphantly.
"I had one once myself," said the Vicar.
The argument, with which his widowhood supplied the Vicar, was sound and unanswerable, and it suited well with my humour to learn from my aunt's cook-maid, and wait patiently on fate.