‘Ah! but I am growing older!’ she cried, triumphantly.
‘All women from twenty-five to forty are of the same age as all men from thirty to fifty. We are of just the same standing, you see!’
‘Seventeen years between us!’
‘Nothing at all, as you will see when I put on my cap, and look staid.’
‘No, no; I can’t spare all that yellow hair.’
‘Yellow indeed! if you don’t know better what to call it, the sooner it is out of sight the better.’
‘Why, what do you call it?’
‘Flaxen, to be sure—blonde cendrée, if you like it better—that is the colour of tow and ashes!’
She was like a playful kitten for the next quarter of a mile, her prettiest sauciness returning in the exuberant, confiding gladness with which she clung to the affection that at length satisfied her spirit; but gravity came back to her as they entered the village.
‘Poor Wrapworth!’ she said, ‘you will soon pass to strangers! It is strange to know that, yet to feel the old days returning for which I have pined ever since we were carried away from home and Mr. Pendy.’