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you that." "Oh! Of course!" I hastily assented. "A woman can't ask a man to marry her. But isn't it sad to see people losing their happiness in this way?" "Now, that's the curious part of it, child," said Aunt Jane. "It's mighty mournful while I'm tellin' it, but if you'd known the doctor and Miss Dorothy, you never would 'a' thought they were losin' anything. At first, you must ricollect, they had hopes to keep their spirits up, and as long as you've got hope, child, you've got everything. Of course there must 'a' come a time when they stopped hopin', and I reckon that was when their hair begun to turn gray and their eyesight failed. It's a time that comes to all of us, honey, and when it does come, we generally find that we've got grace to give up the things we've been wantin' so long; and that's the way it was with Miss Dorothy and the doctor. To see them two, after they'd passed their youth, walkin' together and ridin' together and comin' into church and settin' side by side in the same pew, singin' out o' the same hymn book,--why it was the prettiest sight in the world. Mighty few old married couples ever looked as happy as Miss Dorothy and the doctor, old maid and old bachelor as they were. "Plenty of folks, though, thought jest as you do, and Mother was one of 'em. She never had any patience with the way Dr. Pendleton and Miss Dorothy behaved about marryin'. Says she, 'You put an old married woman and an old maid together, and you can't tell which is which. A woman's got to lose her good looks and her health whether she marries or not, and while she's about it, she might as well lose 'em for her husband and her children instead o' stayin' single and dryin' up all for nothin'.' They said Judge Elrod undertook to reason with the doctor once about the folly of two people stayin' single when they loved each other. He p'inted out to him that Miss Dorothy was gittin' on in years, and that a woman ought to be willin' to put up with a few hardships if she loved a man. And the doctor, he listened, and shook his head and says he, 'Yes, she's fading, fading, but--God be thanked!--it's no fault of mine. The hand of time has touched her; her pretty curls are turning gray and the pretty color's leaving her cheek; but her hands are as soft and white as they were when I put my ring on her finger. She's never known a hardship or carried a burden. She'll go to her grave like a rose that's touched by the frost, and I can be
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