"Twenty-eight."

"Why aren't you married?"

"Why in the world should I be?" he wanted to know.

"Green Valley men are usually the fathers of two or three children at
your age," she informed him calmly.

"Oh," he smiled frankly, "of course I shall marry some day. But a man
need never hurry. He, unlike a woman, can always marry. And I intend
to have children--many children, because one child is always so lonely.
I know because I was an only child."

This astounding piece of confidence kept Nan's tongue tied and for a
few seconds all manner of funny emotions fought within her. She wanted
to laugh, to get angry at the lordly superiority of the idea that a
woman must hurry to the altar. She felt that she ought to feel
embarrassed but the innocent sincerity with which it was all uttered
kept her from blushing and her eyes from snapping. She told herself
instead that of all man creatures she had ever encountered, this boy
from India was certainly the weirdest. And she wondered what a woman
not his mother could do with him.

After a while she tried again.

"Don't you feel rather guilty loafing here in the sunshine?"

"No. Why--what should I be doing?"