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168 deal," observed Mrs. Halket; "and going into society should enable you to do that."

Floyd was silent. His grandmother looked at him with her friendly gray eyes and a little smile, but he did not respond, as she hoped he might do, with some shy confidence. She drew near him, and putting one arm about his neck, stood leaning on his shoulder, with her forehead against his cheek.

"I hope you don't think me hard and worldly for the way I've been talking, Floyd," she said. "I don't by any means believe that the women we know are simply on the lookout for advantageous bargains in husbands. Because several women would perhaps like to marry their daughters to my Floyd is no reason for me to attribute purely sordid motives to them. Indeed I should n't be sorry to hear that you had a special interest in some one of the girls you know—"

Floyd shook his head. "No, Grandmother, there's nobody," he answered.

"Well," said Mrs. Halket, "it's a very good thing for a young man who can afford it to marry young. Marriage is like life insurance; the longer a man puts it off, the higher premium he has to pay. He can't help feeling in the end that he is a loser for delaying. For one thing, his children don't grow up with him, and when he's sixty and his boy John is twenty, he'll think wistfully, 'Now that John's coming of age, if I were only forty-five! I could be playing tennis with him, and swimming races with him, and going shooting with him, instead of sitting, gouty and rheumatic, and just looking on.' Besides, the man and the woman ought to marry while they're still in the adaptable age; otherwise there will be unhappy friction in the necessary readjustments of life. And finally—well, the only real happiness in the world, to my way of thinking, is married happiness. We're here for a short time at best, and while we're here, don't let us economize on whatever real happiness lies within our reach."