"Well, what's goin' to happen?" he asked soberly.
"I'm going to be married."
He raised his eyebrows and gave a whistle.
"That is somethin'! And which is it?"
"What a question! David, of course. Who else could it be?"
"Well, he's the best," he spoke slowly, with considering phlegm. "He's a first-rate boy as far as he goes."
"I don't think that's a very nice way to speak of him. Can't you say something better?"
The old man looked over the mules' backs for a moment of inward cogitation. He was not surprised at the news but he was surprised at something in his Missy's manner, a lack of the joyfulness, that he, too, had thought an attribute of all intending brides.
"He's a good boy," he said thoughtfully. "No one can say he ain't. But some way or other, I'd rather have had a bigger man for you, Missy."
"Bigger!" she exclaimed indignantly. "He's nearly six feet. And girls don't pick out their husbands because of their height."