r thought of
marrying her," said Sylvia. "I think myself they are afraid of her.
It doesn't do for a girl to act too anxious to get married. She just
cuts her own nose off."

"I have never seen her do anything unbecoming," began Rose; then she
stopped, for Lucy's expression, which had caused a revolt in her, was
directly within her mental vision.

It seemed as if Sylvia interpreted her thought. "I have seen her
making eyes," said she.

Rose was silent. She realized that she, also, had seen poor Lucy
making eyes.

"What a girl is so crazy to get married for, anyway, when she has a
good mother and a good home, I can't see," said Sylvia, leading
directly up to the subject in the secret place of her mind.

Rose blushed, with apparently no reason. "But she can't have her
mother always, you know, Aunt Sylvia," said she.

"Her mother's folks are awful long-lived."

"But Lucy is younger. In the course of nature she will outlive her
mother, and then she will be all alone."

"What if she is? 'Ain't she got her good home and money enough to be
independent? Lucy won't need to lift a finger to earn money if she's
careful."

"I always thought it would be very dreadful to live alone," Rose
said, with another blush.

"Well, she needn't be alone. There's plenty of women always in want
of a home. No woman need live alone if she don't want to."

"But it isn't quite like--" Rose hesitated.

"Like what?"

"It wouldn't seem quite so much as if you had your own home, would
it, as if--" Rose hesitated again.

Sylvia interrupted her. "A girl is a fool to get married if she's got
money enough to live on," said she.

"Why, Aunt Sylvia, wouldn't you have married Uncle Henry if you had
had plenty of money?" asked the girl, exactly as Henry had done.

Sylvia colored faintly. "That was a very different matter," said she.

"But why?"

"Because it was," said Sylvia, bringing up one of her impregnable
ramparts against argument.

But the girl persisted. "I don't see why," she said.

Sylvia colored again. "Well, for one thing, your uncle Henry is one
man in a thousand," said she. "I know every silly girl thinks she has
found just that man, but it's only once in a thousand times she does;
and she's mighty lucky if she don't find out that the man in a
thousand is another woman's husband, when she gets her eyes open.
Then there's another thing: nothing has ever come betwixt us."

"I don't know what you mean."

"I mean we've had