Peter had consented to gather the huckleberries which Ellen insisted were of a superior flavour in the back pasture, on the sole condition that his mother should come with him, and the minister's wife had just stepped aside on her way to the Tillinghurst's to gather the southerwood which grew there, for the minister's winter cough, when she caught sight of them.
"She couldn't have stared more if she'd caught me with a girl." Peter protested.
"It's only that she'd have thought it more likely," his mother extenuated.

"I hope you aren't going to be a girl-hater, Peter.

I want you should marry some time, and if I haven't seemed anxious about it before now, you mustn't think it's because I want to keep you for Ellen and me.

What I don't want is that you should take to it just _because_ there's a girl.

Not but what that's natural, but there's more to it than that, Peter.