“Excuse me! I would have given myself an extra shave this morning if I had known the pleasure that was in store for me, but it is a fact that my beard was softer thirty years ago when I would, and you wouldn’t, you little minx of a shepherdess!”
“Do you ever think now of those old times?”
“No, I have forgotten all about them.” We laughed, but neither could look at the other.
“You are something like me,” she said. “As proud as a peacock, as stubborn as a mule, and what is more, I can see you are the kind that will never grow old. You were no beauty in your best days, my friend, and when a man has nothing, you can’t take it away from him; perhaps your nose may be rather thicker, and you have plenty of wrinkles, but on the whole you are not much the worse for wear. I always say that the main thing is to keep the hair on one’s head, and yours is not white yet, and as thick as ever.”
“Numskull keeps the thatch full,” said I.
“You men are so aggravating, you never let anything bother you, but we poor creatures grow old, because we have all the weight thrown on our shoulders; see what a wreck I am! once I was like a fresh peach to look at, and to touch too, if you remember? Such hair as I had! such skin, such a figure, and where has it all gone now? Own up now, you would not have known me if you had met me in the street?”
“I would have known you anywhere out of all the women in the world, with my eyes shut.”
“Perhaps so, but if they were open? I have lost teeth, my cheeks have fallen in, I have red eyes, and a sharp nose; while as for my throat and all the rest of it, I am nothing but an old meal sack, and that’s the truth!”
“In my eyes you are always young.”
“You must be blind, then.”