Is it not like an old memory, his living
here in this house, Soolsby, and all that happened then?"
Soolsby looked at her over his glasses, resting his chin on the back of
the chair he was caning, and his lips worked in and out with a suppressed
smile.
"Time's got naught to do with you. He's afeard of you," he continued. "He
lets you be."
"Friend, thee knows I am almost an old woman now." She made marks
abstractedly upon the corner of a piece of paper. "Unless my hair turns
grey presently I must bleach it, for 'twill seem improper it should
remain so brown."
She smoothed it back with her hand. Try as she would to keep it trim
after the manner of her people, it still waved loosely on her forehead
and over her ears. And the grey bonnet she wore but added piquancy to its
luxuriance, gave a sweet gravity to the demure beauty of the face it
sheltered.
"I am thirty now," she murmured, with a sigh, and went on writing.
The old man's fingers moved quickly among the strips of cane, and, after
a silence, without raising his head, he said: "Thirty, it means naught.
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