"Odd?" repeated Jared. And his tone had such a strange vibration that his companion turned and looked at him.
They continued their walk for an hour longer. When they came back, they found the commodore seated on the veranda of the cottage which had been arranged for their use by Chase's courier. Ruth and Mrs. Franklin were his companions, and Dolly was also there, resting on a sofa which had been rolled out from the room behind. Chase and Jared lighted cigars; Etheridge took out a cigarette.
"Now if we only had Maud Muriel with her long clay pipe!" said Ruth. There was no trace of trouble left in her voice; she had drawn her chair close to her brother's, and seated herself contentedly.
"It's to the pipe you owe the very clever likeness she has made of your scamp of a dog," remarked Etheridge. "The smoking relaxed her a little, without her knowing it, and so she didn't confine herself, as she usually does, to the purely commonplace side."
"Petie! A commonplace side!" protested Ruth.
"She now wishes me to sit to her," said Mrs. Franklin; "for my wrinkles have grown so deep lately that she is sure she can make something satisfactorily hideous. Oh, I don't mind the wrinkles, Mr. Chase!" (for Chase had begun to say, "Not at all, ma'am"). "I received my quietus long ago. When I was not quite forty, there was some question about a particular dress-maker whom I wished to see at McCreery's. 'Was she an old woman?' inquired an assistant. 'We have only one old fitter.' It proved to be the person I meant. She was of my own age. The same year I asked a young friend about a party which he had attended the night before. 'Dreadfully dull,' he answered. 'Nobody there but old frumps.' And the old frumps (as I happened to know) were simply twenty or thirty of my contemporaries."
"Yes, it's hard; I have often thought so!" said Etheridge, with conviction. "Men, you see, have no age. But nothing saves a woman."
"Yes, one thing—namely, to look like a sheep," replied Mrs. Franklin. "If a woman wishes her face to remain young, she must cultivate calm, and even stolidity; she must banish changing expressions; she must give her facial muscles many hours, daily, of absolute repose. Most of my wrinkles have been caused by my wretched habit of contorting my poor thin slave of a face, partly of course to show my intelligence and appreciation, but really, also, in a large measure from sympathy. I have smiled unflinchingly at other people's jokes, looked sad for their griefs, angry for their injuries; I have raised my eyebrows to my hair over their surprises, and knitted my forehead into knots over their mysteries; in short, I have never ceased to grimace. However, even to the sheep-women there comes the fatal moment when their cheeks begin to look like those of an old baby," she concluded, laughing.
Dolly, for once untalkative, had not paid attention to this conversation; the moon had risen, and she had been watching its radiance descend slowly and make a silver path across the river. It was so beautiful! And (a rare occurrence with Dolly) it led her to think of herself. "How I should have enjoyed, enjoyed, enjoyed everything if I had only been well!" Even the tenderly loving mother could not have comprehended fully her daughter's heart at that moment. For Mrs. Franklin had had her part, such as it was, on the stage of human existence, and had played it. But Dolly's regret was for a life unlived. "How enchantingly lovely!" she murmured aloud, looking at the moonlit water.
"Yes," said Etheridge; "and its greatest beauty is that it's primeval. Larue, I suppose, would call it primevalish!"