"I never thought of that," I said naively. "Well then, I wish I had lived when he did, and been born thirty years ago."
"What! Your youth all over? No, little simpleton, whatever you wish, don't be wild enough to wish that! Make the best of your youth, and freshness, and spirit, for they'll take themselves off some fine day, and leave you nothing to do but to look back."
"That's according to the use I make of them, I suppose," I answered, a little ungraciously. "I am not at all afraid that I shall be bitter and misanthropical when I am old, if I spend my youth as I ought."
Mr. Rutledge laughed very much as if he thought I meant it for him; yet the laugh was not altogether a happy one, and he continued:
"See to it then, child, that you use them right. I do not mean to discourage you. I have no doubt you will be very happy and contented when forty comes around on the string of birth-days. Always being and provided, of course, that the hero, or one as near like him as possible, has come in at the right time to realize your dreams."
"But I don't believe," I said, perversely, "that I shall ever have any lover that I shall like as much as I should have done this one."
"He would have made you an earnest lover, certainly, if that would have won you, with perhaps a dash of impetuosity and tyranny in his love; but that is what you women like, is it not?"
"How can I tell?" I said, very demurely.
"I forgot," he answered, laughing, "I forgot that you were just out of school, and could not be supposed to know anything about love and lovers."
"Of course not," I said, putting my hands in the pockets of my basque, and looking at the ground over my left shoulder, after the manner of a French print I had seen in Mademoiselle Céline's room. "Of course not."