"Ah, that's the difference! A Berliner could do it, and a Bostonian couldn't. Do you think it so much better to have the courage of your convictions?"
"I don't know. It seems to me that I'm less and less certain of everything that I used to be sure of."
He laughed, and then he said, "I was thinking how, on our wedding journey, long ago, that Gray Sister at the Hotel Dieu in Quebec offered you a rose."
"Well?"
"That was to your pretty youth. Now the gracious stranger gives you a folding stool."
"To rest my poor old feet. Well, I would rather have it than a rose, now."
"You bent toward her at just the slant you had when you took the flower that time; I noticed it. I didn't see that you looked so very different. To be sure the roses in your cheeks have turned into rosettes; but rosettes are very nice, and they're much more permanent; I prefer them; they will keep in any climate."
She suffered his mockery with an appreciative sigh. "Yes, our age caricatures our youth, doesn't it?"
"I don't think it gets much fun out of it," he assented.
"No; but it can't help it. I used to rebel against it when it first began. I did enjoy being young."