And while masculine youth strove and wrestled for places in the race, aunts and sisters and cousins were pressing into the same arena, doing their best to crowd out the uncles and the brothers and the nephews.
'Poor Jack,' sighed Mary, 'at the worst we can go to the Red River country and grow corn.' This was her favourite fancy, that she and her lover should find their first dwelling in the new world, live as humbly as the peasants lived round Grasmere, and patiently wait upon fortune.

And yet that would not be happiness, unless Maulevrier were to come and stay with them every autumn.

Nothing could reconcile Mary to being separated from Maulevrier for any lengthened period.
There were hours in which she was more hopeful, and defied the wiseacres.

Clever young men had succeeded in the past--clever men whose hair was not yet grey had come to the front in the present.

Granted that these were the exceptional men, the fine flower of humanity.