human
Tut! That's all right to go to church with on Sunday, but on weekdays marriage is no moonshine, I can tell you. It's a practical matter. Just an arrangement for making a home, and getting a family, and bringing up children--that's what marriage is, if you ask me.
gpt
But don't you think love is necessary?
human
Depends what you mean by love. If you mean what they talk about in poetry and songs--bleeding hearts and sighs and kisses and all that nonsense--no!
gpt
That's what people mean when they talk about marrying for love, and it generally ends in poverty and misery, and sensible women have nothing to do with it. Look at me, she said, spitting on the bottom of her iron,
human
said Aunt Bridget, bringing down her flat-iron with a still heavier bang,
gpt
Besides, love will come. Of course it will. It will come in time. If you don't exactly love your husband when you marry him you'll love him later on. A wife ought to teach herself to love her husband. I know I had to, and if. . . .
human
But if she can't, Auntie?
gpt
Then she ought to be ashamed of herself, and say nothing about it.
human
Yes, go, said Aunt Bridget.
gpt
I'm so bothered with other people's business that my head's all through-others. And, Mary O'Neill, she said, looking after me as I passed through the door,