owly for some time from behind. She had been out on the
verandah since lunch, trying to recover from it. That was the one
drawback to meals, she considered, that they required so much recovering
from; and the nicer they were the longer it took. The meals at the
Cosmopolitan were particularly nice, and really all one's time was taken
up getting over them.

She was a lady whose figure seemed to be all meals. The old gentleman
had married her in her youth, when she hadn't had time to have had so
many. He and she were then the same age, and unfortunately hadn't gone
on being the same age since. It had wrecked his life this inability of
his wife to stay as young and new as himself. He wanted a young wife,
and the older he got in years--his heart very awkwardly retained its
early freshness--the younger he wanted her; and, instead, the older he
got the older his wife got too. Also the less new. The old gentleman
felt the whole thing was a dreadful mistake. Why should he have to be
married to this old lady? Never in his life had he wanted to marry old
ladies; and he thought it very hard that at an age when he most
appreciated bright youth he should be forced to spend his precious
years, his crowning years when his mind had attained wisdom while his
heart retained freshness, stranded with an old lady of costly habits and
inordinate bulk just because years ago he had fallen in love with a
chance pretty girl.

He struggled politely out of his chair on seeing her. The twins,
impressed by such venerable abundance, got up too.

"Albert, if you try to move too quick you'll crick your back again,"
said Mrs. Ridding in a monotonous voice, letting herself down carefully
and a little breathlessly on to the edge of a chair that didn't rock,
and fanning herself with a small fan she carried on the end of a massive
gold chain. Her fatigued eyes explored the twins while she spoke.

"I can't get Mr. Ridding to remember that we're neither of us as young
as we were," she went on, addressing the knitting lady but with her eyes
continuing to explore the twins.

They naturally thought she was speaking to them, and Anna-Felicitas said
politely, "Really?" and Anna-Rose, feeling she too ought to make some
comment, said, "Isn't that very unusual?"

Aunt Alice always said, "Isn't that very unusual?" when she didn't know
what else to say, and it worked beautifully, because then the other
person launched into affirmations or denials with the reasons