I've just been looking you over, Peter; you are getting
old and wrinkled and pretty soon you'll be as cranky as the rest
of them, and there will be no living with you. The Major, who is
half your age"--I had come early, as was my custom, to pay my
respects to the dear woman--"is no better. You are both of you
getting into a rut. What you want is some young blood pumped into
your shrivelled veins. I am going to hunt up every girl I know and
all the boys, including that young Breen you are so wild over, and
then I'll send for dear Ruth MacFarlane, who has just come North
with her father to live, and who doesn't know a soul, and nobody
over twenty-five is to be admitted. So if you and the Major want
to come to Ruth's tea--Ruth's, remember; not yours or the
Major's, or mine--you will either have to pass the cake or take
the gentlemen's hats. Do you hear?"
We heard, and we heard her laugh as she spoke, raising her gold
lorgnon to her eyes and gazing at us with that half-quizzical look
which so often comes over her face.
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