"Bertram," she said, "you must make some real nice, elderly bachelor doctor friends, and we'll ask them to visit us."
It seemed a likely plan, but nothing came of it, and the silly lads and the musty ones alike left our Letitia more and more to friendships beyond her years. From being so much in the company of her elders, she grew in time to be more like them. Her modesty became reserve; reserve, in turn, a certain awkwardness or shy aloofness in the presence of the other sex—primness, it was called. She had not forgotten how to smile; her talk was blithe enough with those she knew, and was still colored by her love for poetry, but it fast grew quainter and less colloquial; there was a certain old-fashioned care and subtlety about it, a rare completeness in its phrases not at all like the crude, half-finished ones with which our Grassy Ford belles were content. It added to her charm, I think, but to the evidence as well of that maturity and self-complacency which all men seemed to fear and shun, not one suspecting that the glow beneath meant youth—youth preserved through time and trial to be a light to her, or to Love belated.
Her brown hair turned to gray, her gray to white, and she still came down to us smiling good-morning; still worshipped Keats, still scorned the upstart who made her look; taught on, year after year, in the red brick school-house, wearing the wild flowers farm-boys gathered in the hills. Her life flowed on like a stream in summer, softly in shadow and in sun. She seemed content—no bitter note in her low voice, no glance of envy, malice, or chagrin in those kind gray eyes of hers, which beamed so gently upon others' loves; we used to wonder how they might have shone upon her own.
One day in August—it was again that anniversary birthday around which half my memories of her seem to cling—she gave me a copy of In Memoriam, and bought for herself the linen for another reticule. Neatly, and in the fashion of our grandmothers' day, she worked upon it her initials, L. and P., in Old-English letters, old-rose and gold.
"What," I asked, "is the figure meant for?"
"The figure? Where?"
"In the background there—the figure seven, in the lighter gold."
She bent to study it.