'Look at my sober plodding husband there,' returned Dot. 'He adds
twenty years to my age at least. Don't you, John?'

'Forty,' John replied.

'How many YOU'll add to May's, I am sure I don't know,' said Dot,
laughing. 'But she can't be much less than a hundred years of age
on her next birthday.'

'Ha ha!' laughed Tackleton. Hollow as a drum, that laugh though.
And he looked as if he could have twisted Dot's neck, comfortably.

'Dear dear!' said Dot. 'Only to remember how we used to talk, at
school, about the husbands we would choose. I don't know how
young, and how handsome, and how gay, and how lively, mine was not
to be! And as to May's!--Ah dear! I don't know whether to laugh
or cry, when I think what silly girls we were.'

May seemed to know which to do; for the colour flushed into her
face, and tears stood in her eyes.

'Even the very persons themselves--real live young men--were fixed
on sometimes,' said Dot. 'We little thought how things would come
about. I never fixed on John I'm sure; I never so much as thought
of him. And if I had told you, you were ever to be married to Mr.
Tackleton, why you'd have slapped me. Wouldn't you, May?'

Though May didn't say yes, she certainly didn't say no, or express
no, by any means.