I was, though this great teazing thing beside me would like
to make out that when I was eighteen I looked just as I do now."

"Show the kind gentleman your picture," said Sylvia. "She wears it round
her neck in a locket, the vain old mountebank."

Mrs. Gainsborough opened a gold locket, and Michael looked at a rosy
young woman in a pork-pie hat.

"That's myself," said Mrs. Gainsborough sentimentally. "Well, and I
always loved being young better than anything or anybody, so why
shouldn't I wear next my own heart myself as I used to be?"

"But show him the others," Sylvia demanded.

Mrs. Gainsborough fetched from a desk two daguerreotypes in stained
morocco cases lined with faded piece velvet. By tilting their surfaces
against the light could be seen the shadow of a portrait's wraith: a
girl appearing in pantalettes and tartan frock; a ballerina glimmering,
with points of faint celeste for eyes, and for cheeks the evanescence of
a ghostly bloom.

"Oh, look at her," cried Sylvia. "In her beautiful pantalettes!"

"Hold your tongue, you!"

They started again with their sparring and mock encounters, which lasted
on and off until supper was over. Then they all went back to the other
room and sat round the fire.

"Tell us about the General," said Sylvia.

"Go on, as if you hadn't heard a score of times all I've got to tell
about the General--though you know I hate him to be called that. He'll
always be the Captain to me."

Soon afterward, notwithstanding her first refusal, Mrs. Gainsborough
embarked upon tales of gay days in the 'sixties and 'seventies. It was
astonishing to think that this room in which they were sitting could
scarcely have changed since then.

"The dear Captain! He bought this house for me in eighteen-sixty-nine
before I was twenty, and I've lived in it ever since. Ah, dear! many's
the summer daybreak we've walked back here after dancing all night at
Cremorne. Such lovely lights and fireworks. Earl's Court is nothing to
Cremorne. Fancy their pulling it down as they did. But perhaps it's as
well it went, as all the old faces have gone. It would have given me the
dismals to be going there now without my Captain."

She went on with old tales of London, tales that had in them the very
smoke and grime of the city.

"Who knows what's going to happen when the clock strikes twelve?" she
said, shaking her head. "So enjoy yourselves while you can. That's my
motto. And if there's a hereafter, which goo