"'M, pretty so-so."
"You've never married, I believe?"
John did not have to assume an interest. This spare little man was small only in physique. He was an object of interest to any and every ambitious young lawyer.
"No, never did." Judge Trent shook his head, and rocked his tilted chair gently. "I might count up the number of kitchen fires I've escaped building on cold winter mornings; the number of nocturnal rambles I've escaped taking with shrieking infants doubled up with the colic—and then there are my books! What would have become of my books! My fair one was the pizen-neat kind. She would have dusted them and driven me to drink!"
Dunham smiled. "And yet those are scarcely facts with which you can reassure her," he remarked.
Judge Trent caught the younger man's eye with a sympathetic twinkle.
"Precisely; and the sad consequence is that she has never been entirely reassured. Her name's against her, poor girl—Martha. Careful about many things."
"Then you had no successor?"
"No, and affairs piled up. I had too much to attend to to renew the attack. I didn't have time to smooth down her ruffled feathers, so—the result is that we've each flocked alone. Just as well, just as well," continued the speaker, musingly. "What I was thinking of just now was how many different lives we seem to live in one; how our tastes change; and at best how few illusions are left to lawyers regarding marriage."
"In other words, you're a confirmed old bachelor. What was it you asked me a minute ago—if I were in love?"