"They would know you, even if fifty years had passed."
"I should be an old woman then; but I shall never be so old."
"Why not?"
"By that time the boys will have long been men, and will have wives and children, and my father and my mother will long have been buried, and what should I then do in the world?"
"But you will marry too."
"Never," she replied.
Her voice was so serious, and her great blue eyes that looked over the board at my forehead, which she was then drawing, had so grave an expression, that I could not laugh, as I at first felt disposed to do.
"Why?" I inquired.
"When the boys can do without me, I will be too old."
"But you cannot always go on correcting their exercises."