His grandmother had dropped courtesies to kings; and mine had dropped "aitches." His father had been a European celebrity, mine a ship-chandler in Boston, U.S.A. Yet here we two were; and he might have been a high-spirited and most beautiful little boy picnicking with a sedate and old-maidish little girl.
"How old should you imagine me?" he flung the question like a challenge, as if he had divined my thoughts.
"Oh, say, thirteen, going on fourteen."
"Dear Woman-in-the-Woods, I am thirty-three."
"You are older than I thought."
"You are younger than you think. And you betray the fact," he smiled.
"I have never been very young; probably I shall never be very old."
"You will always be exactly the right age," said Nicholas Jelnik. "For you will always be a little girl, and a young maiden, and a grown woman, and a bit of an old maid, and something of a grandmother. That is a wonderful, a very, very wonderful combination!"
I looked at him with more than doubt. But no, he was not poking fun, though the rich color had come into his cheek, and the golden lights flickered mischievously in his eyes.
"And I forgot to add, also a business woman!" he finished gaily. "Herr Gott, but it took a business woman to tackle old Hynds House and gather together such folks as you have there now!"