"My word! Nearly all the people go to him, he's so friendly and don't stick on the jam—speaks to you everywhere, and has jokes about everything."
"He's a fine man!" corroborated grandma.
"Yes; must be more than six feet high," I responded.
"An' such a gentleman, he's never above having a yarn with you about anythink and everythink."
"Oh, well," I said, "any time I take these turns just send for him."
One doctor was as harmless as another to me. I knew it would relieve the household to have a medico, and he could not injure me, seeing I accorded his medicine and advice about as much deference as the hum of a mosquito.
"Is he a family man?" I asked.
"Yes; so there are all your chances gone in one slap," said Carry, appearing to inquire my state.
I did not tell her there was the most insuperable of all barriers in the way of my marrying any one, and that I had no desire if I could. The first I did not want known, and the second would not be believed if it were, because, though woman is somewhat escaping from her shackles, the skin of old crawl subjection still clings sufficiently tight for it to be beyond ordinary belief that one could be other than constantly on the look-out to secure a berth by appending herself to some man, and more especially does this suspicion hang over a spinster with her hair as grey as mine, and who takes up a position at a boarding-house which is supposed to be the common hunting-ground of women forced on to the matrimonial war-path.
"He has seven little children, and one's a baby, an' his wife is a poor broken-down little thing near always in the hospital. You'd wonder how he married her, he's such a fine-looking man," vouchsafed Andrew.