“Thirty-eight.”
“When a man wants only two years of his hundredth, he probably has learned to know his own mind; but then, in most cases, very little mind is left to him to know.”
“Don’t be satirical, sir; and don’t talk as if you were railing at marriage, when you have just left as happy a young couple as the sun ever shone upon; and owing,—for Mrs. Somers has told me all about her marriage,—owing their happiness to you.”
“Their happiness to me! not in the least. I helped them to marry, and in spite of marriage they helped each other to be happy.”
“You are still unmarried yourself?”
“Yes, thank Heaven!”
“And are you happy?”
“No; I can’t make myself happy: myself is a discontented brute.”
“Then why do you say ‘thank Heaven’?”
“Because it is a comfort to think I am not making somebody else unhappy.”