`` Here we are ! Here we are ! Where are your gay young bridegrooms now ? '' `` Some of them are dead , '' said Dot ; `` and some of them forgotten . Some of them , if they could stand among us at this moment , would not believe we were the same creatures ; would not believe that what they saw and heard was real , and we could forget them so . No ! they would not believe one word of it ! '' `` Why , Dot ! '' exclaimed the Carrier . `` Little woman ! '' She had spoken with such earnestness and fire , that she stood in need of some recalling to herself , without doubt . Her husband 's check was very gentle , for he merely interfered , as he supposed , to shield old Tackleton ; but it proved effectual , for she stopped , and said no more . There was an uncommon agitation , even in her silence , which the wary Tackleton , who had brought his half-shut eye to bear upon her , noted closely , and remembered to some purpose too . May uttered no word , good or bad , but sat quite still , with her eyes cast down , and made no sign of interest in what had passed . The good lady her mother now interposed , observing , in the first instance , that girls were girls , and bygones bygones , and that , so long as young people were young and thoughtless , they would probably conduct themselves like young and thoughtless persons : with two or three other positions of a no less sound and incontrovertible character . She then remarked , in a devout spirit , that she thanked Heaven she had always found in her daughter May a dutiful and obedient child : for which she took no credit to herself , though she had every reason to believe it was entirely owing to herself . With regard to Mr. Tackleton , she said , That he was in a moral point of view an undeniable individual , and That he was in an eligible point of view a son-in-law to be desired , no one in their senses could doubt . -LRB- She was very emphatic here . -RRB- With regard to the family into which he was so soon about , after some solicitation , to be admitted , she believed Mr. Tackleton knew that , although reduced in purse , it had some pretensions to gentility ; and that if certain circumstances , not wholly unconnected , she would go so far as to say , with the Indigo Trade , but to which she would not more particularly refer , had happened differently , it might perhaps have been in possession of wealth . She then remarked that she would not allude to the past , and would not mention that her daughter had for some time rejected the suit of Mr. Tackleton ; and that she would not say a great many other things which she did say at great length .
Finally , she delivered it XXXXX the general result of her observation and experience , that those marriages in which there was least of what was romantically and sillily called love , were always the happiest ; and that she anticipated the greatest possible amount of bliss -- not rapturous bliss ; but the solid , steady-going article -- from the approaching nuptials .
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