She slid upon her knees at his feet. “Dear Roger, do tell me,” she said.
He began to stroke her hair. “You think so much,” he answered: “do you never think about the future, the real future, ten years hence?”
“A great deal.”
“What do you think?”
She blushed a little, and then he felt that she was drawing confidence from his face. “Promise not to laugh!” she said, half laughing herself. He nodded. “I think about my husband!” she proclaimed. And then, as if she had, after all, been very absurd, and to forestall his laughter, “And about your wife!” she quickly added. “I want dreadfully to see her. Why don’t you marry?”
He continued to stroke her hair in silence. At last he said sententiously, “I hope to marry one of these days.”
“I wish you would do it now,” Nora went on. “If only she would be nice! We should be sisters, and I should take care of the children.”
“You are too young to understand what you say, or what I mean. Little girls should not talk about marriage. It can mean nothing to you until you come yourself to marry,—as you will, of course. You will have to decide and choose.”
“I suppose I shall. I shall refuse him.”
“What do you mean?”