Irving smiled. “I know I’m never coming to a place like this unless she is here, too.”
“Oh, Irving, don’t! That awful time will have to come, I suppose, but don’t ruin this lucid interval by talking about it.”
The young man seldom indulged in any covert interchange with Betsy, but now his eyes sparkled with fun as he caught his old friend’s eye.
“Such a mother-in-law as you will make, Madama!” he exclaimed devoutly.
“That depends,” returned Mrs. Bruce complacently. “If you let me pass upon the girl before you commit yourself, I shall do my best.”
“What pretty hair you must have had when you were twenty,” said Irving irrelevantly, after a pause, regarding the fair head at his shoulder, for Mrs. Bruce was carrying her hat in her hand.
“I don’t care for that left-handed compliment at all,” she replied with spirit. “It’s pretty now.”
“It is, for a fact; but wasn’t it still lighter, more golden, when you were twenty?”
“Yes, it was perfectly lovely,” she returned. “The years play us all sorts of mean tricks, but one of the meanest is darkening one’s hair. It was lovely at the time I was married; but at that time I suppose you didn’t care whether I wore hair or corn-silk!”
“Corn-silk,” repeated Irving abstractedly. “That’s what it’s like. Corn-silk.”