erry after dark one night in a proper tantara, with her eyes rolling
and her bosom heaving like the waves of the sea. She'd come over Dart, by
the stepping stones--a tricky road for an old woman even by daylight, but
a fair marvel at night.

"God's my judge!" began Mary, dropping in the chair by the fire. "God's my
judge, Rupert and Susan, but he's offered marriage!"

"Bob!" I said; and yet I weren't so surprised as I pretended to be. And my
wife didn't even pretend.

"I've seen it coming this longful time, Mary," she declared. "And why
not?"

"Why not? I wonder at you, Susan!" my sister answered, all in a flame. "To
think of an old woman like me--with white hair and a foot in the grave!"

"You ain't got a foot in the grave!" answered Susan. "In fact you be peart
as a wagtail on both feet--else you'd never have come over they
slipper-stones in the dark so clever. And your hair's only white by a
trick of nature, and sixty-five ain't old on Dartmoor."

"Nor yet anywhere else," I said. "The females don't throw up the sponge in
their early forties nowadays, like they used to do. In fact far from it.
Didn't I see Squire Bellamy's lady riding astride to hounds but yesterday
week, in male trousers and a tight coat--and her forty-six if a day?
You're none too old for him, if that was all."

"But it ain't all," answered Mary. "Why, he offered me his brains to help
out mine, and his strong right arm for me to lean upon! And he swears to
goodness that he never offered marriage before--because he never found the
woman worthy of it--and so on; and all to me! Me--a spinster from my youth
up and never a thought of a man! And now, of course, I'll be a
laughing-stock to Dartymoor, and a figure of fun for every thoughtless
fool to snigger at."

"You couldn't help his doing it," I said. "'Tis a free country."

"And more could he help it, seemingly," she answered. "Any way he swore he
was driven to speak. In fact he have had the thing in his prayers for a
fortnight. 'Tis a most ondacent, plaguey prank for love to play; for
surely at our time of life, we ought to be dead to such things?"

"A man's never dead to such things--especially a man that's been a
soldier, or a sailor," I told my sister; and Susan said the same, and
assured Mary that there was nothing whatever ondacent to it, silly though
it might be.

Then Mary fired up in her turn and said there wasn't nothing whatever
silly to it that she could see. In fact quite the c