"I'd marry him quicker than you could hiccough!" she answered, gazing after them with a yearning look. "What would you do?" "I don't know," I told her, and I don't. "Some people seem to be happy even after they're married, but I think it would be nice to be like Dante and Beatrice, with no gas bills nor in-laws to bother you." "Shoo! Well, I bet she marries him in spite of all that talk about the spirit. A spirit is all right to marry if he smells like good cigars and is _on the spot_!" "Yes, I'm afraid Doctor Bynum has lost his chance; for a girl will love the nearest man--when the lilies-of-the-valley are in bloom." "But I heard Mrs. West say the other day that Mr. Fairfax would make a mighty bad husband, in spite of the good looks and deep voice. He'd always forget when the oatmeal was out." "Yes," I answered, "I heard her tell mother the other day that she would leave all she had to somebody else if she did marry him, for she believed in every married couple there ought to be at least one that had sense enough to keep the fences mended up." "Why, that old lady's mind is as narrow as a ready-made nightgown," Jean exclaimed in surprise. "Why, affinities marry in every page of the pink Sunday papers!" "But really who _does_ make the living?" I asked, for I had heard mother say that that kind of folks never worked. "The lawyer that divo'ces 'em makes the livin'," Mammy Lou said then, popping her black head out through mother's white curtains. "An' them two, if they marries, will fu'nish him with sev'al square meals! I've knowed 'em both sence they secon' summer," she said, a brown finger pointing in the direction they had gone, and a smile coming over her face, for second summers are to old women what war times are to old men, only more so. "I said it then and I say it now, he's too pore! Across the chist! He thinks too much, which ain't no 'count. It leads to _devilment_! Folks ain't got no business thinkin'--they ought to go to sleep when they're through work!" "But his sympathy----" I started, for that's what Miss Irene is always talking about, but mammy interrupted me. "Sympathy nothin'! How much sympathy do you reckon he'd have on a freezin' mornin' with wet kin'lin' and the stovepipe done fell down? She better look out for a easy-goin' man that ain't carin' 'bout nothin' 'cept how to keep the barn full o' corn and good shoes for seven or eight chil'en!"