“Look out, you're spilling the water,” said Lucinda. “What for?”
“I—thought you might like to wear them, you know,” said Albion. He had never before given violets to a woman, and she had never had any given her by a man.
“Thank you,” she said, faintly.
“I've ordered a hack to come for me at half-past seven, and—I thought maybe you'd like to ride with me,” said Albion, further.
Lucinda stared. “What for?” she said again.
“I thought you might like to ride.”
Then Lucinda colored. “Why, folks would talk,” said she.
“Let them. I don't care; do you?”
“Albion Bennet, I'm a lot older than you. I ain't old enough to be your mother, but I'm a good deal older than you.”
“I don't care,” said Albion. “I know how old you are. I don't care. I'd enough sight rather have you than those young things that keep racing to my store. When I get you I shall know what I've got, and when I've got them I shouldn't know. I'd rather have heavy bread, or dry bread, and know it was bread, than new-fangled things that ain't a mite more wholesome, and you don't know what you've got. I don't know how you feel, Lucinda, but I ain't one who could ever marry somebody he hadn't summered and wintered. I've summered and wintered you, and you've summered and wintered me. I don't know how much falling in love there is for either of us, but I reckon we can get on together and have a good home, and that's what love-making has to wind up in, if the mainspring don't break and all the works bust. I'm making quite a little lot from my store. I suppose maybe the soda and candy trade will fall off a little if I get married, but if it does I can take a young clerk to draw it. You won't have to work so hard. You can let some of this big hotel, and keep rooms enough for us, and I'll hire a girl for the kitchen and you can do fancy-work.”