outh ran hot in my veins. Yet one
sees headlines in the papers, "Too Old at Forty." And--one is forty. It
didn't matter--that is, I didn't think of it, until the coming of this
boy.

His very ideas and manners are different from mine. No doubt they're the
approved ideas and manners of his generation, as we had ours at his age.
I wear my hair short, and think no more of its existence except to wash
and brush it; but this Dick parts his in the middle, and sleeks the long
locks back, keeping them smooth as a surface of yellowish satin, with
bear's grease or lard, or some appalling, perfumed compound. His look is
a mixture of laziness and impudence, and half his sentences he ends up
with "What?" or even "What-what?" His way with women is slightly
condescending, and takes their approval for granted. There's no youthful
shyness about him, and what he wants he expects to get; but with _me_ he
puts on an irritating, though, I fear, conscientious air of deference
that relegates me to the background of an older generation; sets me on a
pedestal there, perhaps; but I have no wish for a pedestal.

Still, to do him justice, the lad is neither ill-looking nor
ill-mannered. Indeed, women may consider him engaging. His aunt seems
devoted to him, and says he is irresistible to girls. I think if no
"greenery yallery" haze floated before my eyes, I might see that he is
rather a decent boy, extremely well-groomed, alert, with good, short
features and bright eyes. When he walks with Ellaline he has no more
than an inch the advantage of her in height, but he has a well-knit
figure and a "Sandhurst bearing."

"Crabbed age and youth cannot live together."

Am I crabbed age?

Well, this long digression ought to bring me on as far as Winchester,
where we came yesterday afternoon, late. We should have been earlier
(though our start was delayed by our guests' preparations), but Ellaline
was fascinated by the pretty village of Twyford. You remember it? She'd
been reading it up in a guide-book, and would stop for a look at the
place where the Fair Fitzherbert was said to have been married to her
handsome prince, later George IV. I can't recall hearing that story,
though certainly Mrs. Fitzherbert's relations lived near; but I knew
Pope was sent down from school there because of a satire he wrote on the
master, and that Franklin visited and wrote in Twyford.

It was after four when I turned the car round that sharp corner which
swings you into