Mrs. Richie sighed. "Well, of course they must be prudent, but I am sorry to have them wait. It will be some time before David's practice is enough for them to marry on. He is so funny in planning their housekeeping expenses," she said, with that mother-laugh of mockery and love. "You should hear the economies they propose!" And she told him some of them. "They make endless calculations as to how little they can possibly live on. You would never suppose they _could_ be so ignorant as to the cost of things! Of course I enlighten them when they deign to consult me. I do wish David would let me give him enough to get married on," she ended, a little impatiently. "I think he's right not to," Robert Ferguson said. "David is so queer about money," Nannie commented; and rose, saying she wanted to go indoors to the lamplight and her book. "Pity Blair hasn't some of David's 'queerness,'" Mr. Ferguson barked, when she had vanished into the house. Mrs. Richie looked after her uneasily, missing her protecting presence. But in Mr. Ferguson's matter-of-fact talk he seemed just the same harsh, kind, unsentimental neighbor of the last seventeen years; "he's forgotten his foolishness," she thought, and resigned herself, comfortably, to Nannie's absence. "Does Elizabeth know about the legacy?" she asked. "No, she hasn't an idea of it. I was bound that the expectation of money shouldn't spoil her." "Well," she jeered at him, "I do hope you are satisfied _now_, that she is not spoiled by money or anything else! How afraid you were to let yourself really love the child--poor little Elizabeth!" "I had reason," he insisted doggedly. "Life had played a trick on me once, and I made up my mind not to build on anybody again, until I was sure of them." Then, without looking at her, he said, as if following out some line of thought, "I hope you have come to feel that you will marry me, Mrs. Richie?" "_Oh!_" she said, in dismay. "I don't see why you can't make up your mind to it," he continued, frowning; "I know"--he stopped, and put on his glasses carefully with both hands--"I know I am a bear, but--" "You are not!" "Don't interrupt. I am. But not at heart. Listen to me, at my age, talking about 'hearts'!" They both laughed, and then Mr. Ferguson gave a snort of impatience. "Look at those two youngsters down there, engaged to be married, and swearing by the moon that nobody ever loved as they do. How absurd it is! A man has to be fifty before he knows enough about love to get married." "Nonsense!" "I cannot take youth seriously," he ruminated; "its behavior, yes; that may be serious enough! Youth is always firing the Ephesian dome; but youth itself, and its opinions, always seem to me a little ridiculous. Yet those two infants seem to think that they have discovered love! Well," he interrupted himself, in sudden somber memory, "I felt that way once myself. And yet _now_, I know--"