“I wish I could spend all my life here, sitting in this veranda.”
“Well, do then!” said Kátya.
“That’s all very well,” he said, “but life won’t sit still.”
“Why don’t you marry?” asked Kátya; “you would make an excellent husband.”
“Because I like sitting still?” and he laughed. “No, Katerína Kárlovna, too late for you and me to marry. People have long ceased to think of me as a marrying man, and I am even surer of it myself; and I declare I have felt quite comfortable since the matter was settled.”
It seemed to me that he said this in an unnaturally persuasive way.
“Nonsense!” said Kátya; “a man of thirty-six makes out that he is too old!”
“Too old indeed,” he went on, “when all one wants is to sit still. For a man who is going to marry that’s not enough. Just you ask her,” he added, nodding at me; “people of her age should marry, and you and I can rejoice in their happiness.”
The sadness and constraint latent in his voice was not lost upon me. He was silent for a little, and neither Kátya nor I spoke.
“Well, just fancy,” he went on, turning a little on his seat; “suppose that by some mischance I married a girl of seventeen, Másha, if you like—I mean, Márya Alexándrovna. The instance is good; I am glad it turned up; there could not be a better instance.”
I laughed; but I could not understand why he was glad, or what it was that had turned up.