“What?”
“If you’ve got to marry somebody,” this uncomfortable old lady repeated, “why don’t you marry Martha?”
“Why, that’s just preposterous!” Dan protested. “The last person in the world Martha’d ever think of marrying would be me, and the last person I’d ever think of marrying would be Martha.”
“Why?”
“Why?” he repeated incredulously. “Why, because we aren’t in love with each other and never could be! Never in the world!”
“It isn’t necessary,” Mrs. Savage informed him. “You’d get along better if you weren’t. Martha comes of good stock, and she’s like her stock.”
“There are other ‘good stocks’ in the country,” he thought proper to remind her gently. “There are a few people in New York of fairly good ‘stock’, you know, grandma.”
“Maybe a few,” she said;—“but not our kind. The surest way to make misery is to mix stocks. You come of the best stock in the country, and you’ll be mighty sick some day if you go mixing it with a bad one.”
“But good gracious!” he cried, “who’s talking of my mixing it with a——”
“Never mind,” she interrupted crossly. “I know what those New York girls are like.”