the more they liked her, the more they tried to enlist her sympathies in
behalf of poor Josiah--and the more they tried to throw their brother
into Martha's private company.

"Look here," he said one day, when his two sisters were pushing him too
hard. "What's all this excitement about Martha? Who is she, anyway?"

"Why, don't you know!" Cordelia sweetly asked him, and drawing a full
breath she added: "Martha--is--your--future--wife--"

If you had been there, you would have been pardoned for thinking that the
last of the Spencers had suddenly discovered that he was sitting upon a
remonstrative bee.

The two sisters smiled at him--rather nervously, it is true, but still
they kept their hands upon their brother's shoulders, as though they were
two nurses soothing a patient and saying: "There, now ... The-e-e-ere ...
Just be quiet and you'll feel better in a little while."

"Yes, dear," whispered Cordelia, her mouth ever so close to his ear.
"Your future wife--and the mother of your future children--"

"Nonsense, nonsense--" muttered Josiah, breaking away quite flustered.
"I'm--I'm too old--"

Almost speaking in concert they told him about Captain Abner Spencer who
had children until he was sixty, and Ezra Babcock, father-in-law of the
third Josiah Spencer, who had a son proudly born to him in his
sixty-fourth year.