She gave him sympathy, too, in a childlike way. She did not like it if he interrupted his love-making to tell her about his plans for Boarzell, but at other moments she seemed to enjoy hearing him talk of his ambition; and often, when the jar and failure of things depressed him, she would take him in her arms, and soothe him like a baby with--"Of course you'll have Boarzell, my Reuben; of course it will be yours--you're so strong and masterful, you're bound to get all you want." Her delight in him never seemed to fail. Sometimes it seemed to him strange that the difference in their ages did not affect her more. She never gave him a hint that she thought him too old for her. He once told her that he was nearly fifty, but she had answered with a happy laugh that she did not like boys. As a matter of fact, Reuben at fifty was a lover of whom any girl might still be proud. If a little grey had come into his hair, it had merely been to give it the gleam of polished iron, and contrast it more effectively with the swarthiness of his skin. His teeth were as white and even as when he was twenty, for he had never risked spoiling them by too much tobacco--his eyes, dark and bright, were like a boy's; his broad back was straight, and his powerful arms could lift even the plump Rose to his shoulder. He once carried her on his shoulder all the way from Tide Barn to the beginning of Starvecrow lane. § 4. Towards the end of August, Reuben asked Rose to marry him. The request was not so much the outcome of passion as might have been imagined from the form it took. It was true that he was deeply enamoured of her, but it was also true that for three months he had endured the intoxication of her presence without definitely, or even indefinitely, claiming her for his own. He had held himself back till he had thoroughly weighed and pondered her in relation to his schemes--he was not going to renounce Alice for a wife who would be herself a drawback in another way. However, though he had never deceived himself that Rose's sympathetic tendernesses meant any real sharing of his ambition, he was soon convinced that to marry her would be materially to help himself in the battle which was now dragging a little on his side. He wanted ready money--her settlements would provide that; and her heirship of Lardner held out dazzling hopes for the future. He wanted children--where could he find a healthier mother? He wanted to raise the dignity of Odiam, and could hardly have thought of a better means than marriage with the niece of one of the wealthiest and most important farmers in the parish. To crown all, he gave himself an adorable woman, young, lovely, tender, and gay. This consideration could not have dragged him contrary to his ambition, but combined with it, it could give to an otherwise very practical and material plan all the heats of passion and the glories of romance.