"Well, I should say I do! I'm going to have a first-class father for my children!" This was what Emily delighted in, Martha's frank way of discussing things unembarrassed with her. There was never a grown woman she could have said a thing like that to when she was a girl! "If anybody asks me to marry him," Martha continued—-"I don't mean like Johnnie and these boys—I mean in earnest——"
"Do these boys ask you to marry them?"
"Oh, you know, mother. They'd ask anybody just to try it. Johnnie's got to practice on someone——
"But suppose someone should accept him—now—I mean——"
"Oh, well, the risk would be all her own," Martha said, serenely. "If anybody asked me seriously, I'd say to him: 'Let me hear you sing backwards. Let me see you go upstairs rabbit and come down alligator.' And if he couldn't play games nicely, like Uncle Jim, I'd say there's nothing doing."
Emily laughed at the absurdity of the child.
"I'm glad to hear it," she said railingly. And then she added: "You'll wait a long time before you come across one like him. There isn't one in a million."
Martha turned and looked at her mother with deliberate curiosity.
"I should have thought you would just love him, mother!"
"I did. We all did. He had such lovely ways."