"He didn't hate 'em none when he come here that first summer," said Miss Heppy, with a reflective smile. "He was a young professor at some college then. I expect he didn't know as much about inventing things then as what he does now. But he knowed more how to please women. He pleased your Aunt Ida right well, I cal'late."
"Never! You don't mean it, Miss Heppy!" exclaimed Lorna, sensing a romance.
"Yes, I thought then Miss Ida and Henry Endicott would make a match of it. But somehow—well, such things don't always go the way you expect them to. Both your aunt and Professor Endicott were high-strung—same's you and Ralph be, Lorny."
"Why," cried the girl smiling again, "I'd never fight with Ralph at all if they didn't try to make us marry. I wonder if it is so, that Aunt Ida and Ralph's uncle were once fond of each other! If they could not make a match of it, why are they so determined to force Ralph and me into a marriage?"
"Mebbe because they see their mistake," Miss Heppy said judiciously. "I don't believe your aunt and Henry Endicott have been any too happy endurin' these past twenty-odd years."
"Tell me!" urged the girl, her cheeks aglow and her eyes dancing. "Is remaining single all your life such a great cross, Miss Heppy? Are there not some compensations?"
The woman looked up from darning the big blue wool sock that could have fitted none but her brother's foot. The smile with which she favored the girl had much tenderness as well as retrospection in it.
"I don't believe that any woman over thirty is ever single from choice, Lorny. She may never find the man she wants to marry. Or something separates her from the one she is sure-'nough fitted to mate with. So, she must make the best of it."
"But you, Miss Heppy?" asked Lorna, boldly. "Why didn't you ever marry?"
"Why—I was cal'lating on doing so, when I was a gal," said the woman gently. "Listen!"