no family," said Sylvia, firmly, although her color
deepened. "I know you think it's awful for me to say such a thing,
but look right up and down this street at the folks that got married
about the same time Henry and I did. How many of them that's had
families 'ain't had reason to regret it? I tell you what it is,
child, girls don't know everything. It's awful having children, and
straining every nerve to bring them up right, and then to have them
go off in six months in consumption, the way the Masons lost their
three children, two boys and a girl. Or to worry and fuss until you
are worn to a shadow, the way Mrs. George Emerson has over her son,
and then have him take to drink. There wasn't any consumption in the
Mason family on either side in a straight line, but the three
children all went with it. And there ain't any drink in the Emerson
family, on her side or his, all as straight as a string, but Mrs.
Everson was a Weaver, and she had a great-uncle who drank himself to
death. I don't believe there's a family anywhere around that hasn't
got some dreadful thing in it to leak out, when you don't expect it,
in children. Sometimes it only leaks in a straight line, and
sometimes it leaks sidewise. You never know. Now here's my family. I
was a White, you know, like your aunt Abrahama. There's consumption
in our family, the worst kind. I never had any doubt but what Henry
and I would have lost our children, if we'd had any."

"But you didn't have any," said Rose, in a curiously naive and
hopeful tone.

"We are the only ones of all that got married about the time we did
who didn't have any," said Sylvia, in her conclusive tone.

"But, Aunt Sylvia," said Rose, "you wouldn't stop everybody's getting
married? Why, there wouldn't be any people in the world in a short
time."

"There's some people in the world now that would be a good sight
better off out of it, for themselves and other folks," said Sylvia.

"Then you don't think anybody ought to get married?"

"If folks want to be fools, let them. Nothing I can say is going to
stop them, but I'll miss my guess if some of the girls that get
married had the faintest idea what they were going into they would
stop short, if it sent them over a rail-fence. Folks can't tell girls
everything, but marriage is an awful risk, an awful risk. And I say,
as I said before, any girl who has got enough to live on is a fool to
get married."

"But I don't see why, after all."

"Becau