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