That child ain't going to marry anybody." "Sylvia, you don't mean that you want her to be an old maid!" "It's the best thing for any girl, if she only thought so, to be an old maid," said Sylvia.
Henry laughed a little.

"That's a compliment to me." "I ain't saying anything against you.

I've been happy enough, and I suppose I've been better off than if I'd stayed single; but Rose has got enough to live on, and what any girl that's got enough to live on wants to get married for beats me." Henry laughed again, a little bitterly this time.

"Then you wouldn't have married me if you had had enough to live on ?" he said.
Sylvia looked at him, and an odd, shamed tenderness came into her elderly face.

"There's no use talking about what wasn't, anyway," said she, and Henry understood.
After a little while Sylvia again brought up the subject of Horace and Rose.