"You need not be an old maid unless you wish."
"Now, I had never thought of that!" observed Miss Anna, in a very peculiar tone. "But we'll not talk about myself; let us talk about yourself. You are looking extremely well—now aren't you?"
"No one has a better right. It is due you to let you know this.
There's good timber in me yet."
"Due me! I am not interested in timber."
"Anna," he said, throwing his arms around one of his knees, "our hour has come—we need not wait any longer."
"Wait for what?" inquired Miss Anna, bending toward him with the scrutiny of a near-sighted person trying to make out some looming horror.
"Our marriage."
Miss Anna rose as by an inward explosion.
"Go, buzzard!"
He kept his seat and stared at her with a dropped jaw. Habit was powerful in him; and there was something in her anger, in that complete sweeping of him out other way, that recalled the domestic usages of former years and brought to his lips an involuntary time-worn expression: