“So it is,” Elias assented, conscious of a certain dismal humor in the situation.
There befell a silence, during which the rabbi, still with a smile upon his lips, seemed to be revolving the intelligence in his mind.
Pretty soon, “Yes, I admit, it does surprise me,” he continued, “for, to speak the truth, I had set you down for a pretty confirmed woman-hater. But, as I say, it's high time. Men wait too long nowadays about getting married. In half the weddings that I perform, the bridegrooms are fully thirty-five, and many of them are upwards of forty. Now, in my time, it was different. We used to recognize marriage as a religious obligation—which it is, in fact—and to look askance at a man who was still single at five-and-twenty. I myself was married at twenty-three.”
He paused for a moment, then asked, “Well, have you begun to look around?”
“To look around?” queried Elias, puzzled.
“Exactly—for a young lady,” explained the rabbi.
“Oh! Why, no. I found her without looking around.”
“Found her? You mean, then, that you have actually made a choice?”
“Why, of course. What did you suppose?”
“Oh, I thought may be you were merely considering the subject abstractly—on general principles—and had decided that the time had come. But you say that you have already chosen the lady. Well, I declare, how close-mouthed you have kept!—I suppose now,” he added, “you want me to open negotiations, eh?”