“Did she have a disappointment?” inquired Mr. Sammy, as one of the younger generation, who fully sensed a woman’s loss in not obtaining a companion like himself.
“No. ‘Do you know,’ says she to my niece, ‘why I never got married?’ ‘No,’ says my niece, ‘I don’t.’—‘Tew skittish!’ says Carline.”
“I never seen such a neighborhood as this is for old maids!” exclaimed Mr. Plankson.
Miss Lucy regarded him with a virgin’s pitying tolerance. Homely as she was, she thought it would have been impossible for her to have taken up with the likes of William Plankson in his best days.
“There has been too much marryin’ and givin’ in marriage in this neighborhood,” she declared with her soft drawl.
“Seem-me-like you ain’t no good judge of that, Lucy,” bantered Mr. Plankson.
“It’s Emeline Smith that’s the judge,” thrust in his wife.
Miss Lucy contemplated silently.
“I was thinkin’ of Jaw-awn and Sue Emma,” she said; and the other three composed themselves to hear the facts concerning the man from the Spanish war. With a rustle like that of a congregation settling to the sermon after preliminaries, they moved their feet and hands and waited on Miss Lucy.
“I was against the match, for Sue Emma had been married, and was through with it. Her man died and left her with a farm and two children; and a widow well fixed is a sight better off than a married woman.”