"Of course. I hope I won't forget, though, and kiss you. I'm so apt to when I'm talking, if I like a person. Tobacco is so bitter. I'll tell you what I think is the matter with this room. It's—it's—" She looked around carefully. "It's something that isn't in it. I don't know what it is. Why don't you get married, Uncle Winthrop? Maybe your wife would know."
Laine put the unlighted cigar back on the table, and Dorothea's hands, which were stroking one of his, were gripped by it and held tightly.
"I do not doubt it. The trouble is in getting the wife."
Dorothea sat upright. "The idea! I heard Miss Robin French say the other day the way unmarried men were run after was outrageous, and all they had to do was to stand still and crow a little, and up would come a-clucking all kinds of hens, little ones and big ones, and young ones and old ones, and— Don't you tell anybody, but I think she'd come, too!" Dorothea's hands came together, and she laughed gleefully. "Father says if Miss Robin would give up hoping she'd be happier." Suddenly her face sobered. "Do all ladies try to marry a man, Uncle Winthrop?"
"They most certainly do not." Laine smiled in Dorothea's face, and before the child's clear eyes his own, full of weary pain, turned away. "Many of them take very long to make up their minds to marry at all."
"Have you ever asked one to marry you?"
Laine did not answer. Dorothea's question was unheard. His thoughts were elsewhere.
"Have you?"
"Have I what?"
"Ever asked a lady to many you?"