"I really forget," replied Richard, considering. "But there must have been. The old gentleman had time enough to have several. I believe, however, that history is rather silent about his domestic affairs."
"Well, then," said Margaret, after thinking it over, "I would like to be as old as the youngest Mrs. Methuselah."
"That was probably the last one," remarked Richard, with great profundity. "She was probably some giddy young thing of seventy or eighty. Those old widowers never take a wife of their own age. I shouldn't want you to be seventy, Margaret,--or even eighty."
"On the whole, perhaps, I shouldn't fancy it myself. Do you approve of persons marrying twice?"
"N--o, not at the same time."
"Of course I didn't mean that," said Margaret, with asperity. "How provoking you can be!"
"But they used to,--in the olden time, don't you know?"
"No, I don't."
Richard burst out laughing. "Imagine him," he cried,--"imagine Methuselah in his eight or nine hundredth year, dressed in his customary bridal suit, with a sprig of century-plant stuck in his button-hole!"
"Richard," said Margaret solemnly, "you shouldn't speak jestingly of a scriptural character."