Then, “Ah, wait till you’re my age—wait till you’re a hundred and fifteen,” she pronounced in a hollow voice, making her face long, and shaking her head.
It was my turn to laugh now. Afterwards, “I don’t believe you’re much older than I am,” I confided to her, with bluff geniality.
“What’s the difference between twenty-two and thirty—especially when one has seen the world a bit?” she asked.
“You’re never thirty,” I expostulated.
“An experienced old fellow of two-and-twenty,” she observed, “must surely be aware that people do sometimes live to attain the age of thirty.”
“You’re not thirty,” I reiterated.
“Perhaps not,” she said; “but unless I’m careful, I shall be, before I know it. Have you been long in Rome?”
“Oh, I’m an old Roman,” I replied airily. “We used to come here when I was a child. And I was here again when I was eighteen, and again when I was twenty.”
“Mercy!” she cried. “Then you will be able to put me up to the tricks of the town.”
“Why, but you live here, don’t you?” I wondered simply.