'I am engaged, mother.'

'What in, dear?'

'I am going to bring home a wife.'

She was deaf and very sleepy.

'What kind of a knife, dear?' she asked.

'I am going to marry Hazel Woodus.'

'You can't do that, dear,' She spoke with unruffled calm, as if Edward
were three years old.

'I can, and shall mother.'

'Ah, well, it won't be for a long, long time,' she said, thinking aloud
as she often did, and adding with the callousness that sometimes comes
with age--arising not from hardness, but from the atrophy of the
emotions--'and, of course, she may die before then.'

'Die!' Edward's voice surprised himself, and it made his mother jump.

'The young do die,' she went on; 'we all have to go. Your poor father
fell asleep. I shall fall asleep.'

She began to do so. But his next words made her wide awake again.

'I'm going to be married in May, next month.'