"Of course. I hope I won't forget, though, and kiss you. I'm so apt to when I'm talking, if I like a person. Tobacco is so bitter. I'll tell you what I think is the matter with this room. It's--it's--" She looked around carefully. "It's something that isn't in it. I don't know what it is. Why don't you get married, Uncle Winthrop? Maybe your wife would know." Laine put the unlighted cigar back on the table, and Dorothea's hands, which were stroking one of his, were gripped by it and held tightly. "I do not doubt it. The trouble is in getting the wife." Dorothea sat upright. "The idea! I heard Miss Robin French say the other day the way unmarried men were run after was outrageous, and all they had to do was to stand still and crow a little, and up would come a-clucking all kinds of hens, little ones and big ones, and young ones and old ones, and-- Don't you tell anybody, but I think she'd come, too!" Dorothea's hands came together, and she laughed gleefully. "Father says if Miss Robin would give up hoping she'd be happier." Suddenly her face sobered. "Do all ladies try to marry a man, Uncle Winthrop?" "They most certainly do not." Laine smiled in Dorothea's face, and before the child's clear eyes his own, full of weary pain, turned away. "Many of them take very long to make up their minds to marry at all." "Have you ever asked one to marry you?" Laine did not answer. Dorothea's question was unheard. His thoughts were elsewhere. "Have you?" "Have I what?" "Ever asked a lady to many you?" "I have." The hand which Dorothea had been stroking was dropped. She sprang to her feet and stood in front of him, her hands clasped in rigid excitement on her breast. "When"--her voice curled upward in quivering delight--"when is she going to do it, Uncle Winthrop?" "I do not know. She has not said she would do it at all." "Not said--she would--marry--you!" Delight had changed to indignation high and shrill, and Dorothea's eyes blazed brilliantly. "Is she a crazy lady?" "She is not." "Then why?" "She is not quite sure she-- It is not a thing to talk about, Dorothea." He drew her again on his lap and unclasped the clenched fingers. "We are good friends, you and I, and I have told you what I have told no one else. So far as I am concerned, it does not matter who knows, but until she decides we will not talk of this again. You understand, don't you, Dorothea?" "I understand she must have very little sense. I don't see how you could want to marry a lady who didn't know right off, the very first minute, that she wanted to marry you. Do--do I know her, Uncle Winthrop?" "You do." For a moment there was silence, broken only by the ticking of the clock on the mantel; and slowly Dorothea turned to her uncle, her big brown eyes troubled and uncertain. For half a moment she looked at him, then, without warning, threw her arms around his neck and hid her face against his.