The trouble is in getting the wife."
Dorothea sat upright. "The idea! I heard Miss Robin French say the
other day the way unmarried men were run after was outrageous, and
all they had to do was to stand still and crow a little, and up would
come a-clucking all kinds of hens, little ones and big ones, and
young ones and old ones, and-- Don't you tell anybody, but I think
she'd come, too!" Dorothea's hands came together, and she laughed
gleefully. "Father says if Miss Robin would give up hoping she'd be
happier." Suddenly her face sobered. "Do all ladies try to marry a
man, Uncle Winthrop?"
"They most certainly do not." Laine smiled in Dorothea's face, and
before the child's clear eyes his own, full of weary pain, turned
away. "Many of them take very long to make up their minds to marry
at all."
"Have you ever asked one to marry you?"
Laine did not answer. Dorothea's question was unheard. His thoughts
were elsewhere.
"Have you?"
"Have I what?"
"Ever asked a lady to many you?"
"I have."
The hand which Dorothea had been stroking was dropped. She sprang to
her feet and stood in front of him, her hands clasped in rigid
excitement on her breast.
"When"--her voice curled upward in quivering delight--"when is she
going to do it, Uncle Winthrop?"
"I do not know.
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