Elizabeth Gaskell

“ Philip reddened. Often as the idea of marriage had come into his mind, this was the first time it had been gravely suggested to him by another. But he replied quietly enough.
'I don't think Hester Rose has any thought of matrimony.'
'To be sure not; it is for thee, or for William Coulson, to make her think. She, may-be, remembers enough of her mother's life with her father to make her slow to think on such things. But it's in her to think on matrimony; it's in all of us.'
'Alice's husband was dead before I knew her,' said Philip, rather evading the main subject. ”

“ She replied, with apparent truth, that both might wish to marry, and surely the wife of one ought to take possession of the house belonging to the business; that she was not going to trust herself to the fancies of young men, who were always, the best of them, going and doing the very thing that was most foolish in the way of marriage; of which state, in fact, she spoke with something of acrimonious contempt and dislike, as if young people always got mismatched, yet had not the sense to let older and wiser people choose for them. ”

“ I've had a deal o' time on my hands i' my youth, and I'd good schooling as long as father lived.'
'Lad! it's not schooling, nor knowledge, nor book-learning as carries a man through t' world. It's mother-wit. And it's noane schooling, nor knowledge, nor book-learning as takes a young woman. It's summat as cannot be put into words.'
'That's just what I told Coulson!' said Philip, quickly. 'He were sore put about because Hester had gi'en him the bucket, and came to me about it.'
'And what did thou say?' asked Alice, her deep eyes gleaming at him as if to read his face as well as his words. ”