I cannot abide such vanities!"
"Oh dear! Sally, when will you understand what I mean? I want to
know how I'm to keep remembering how old I am, so as to prevent
myself from feeling so young? I was quite startled just now to
see my hair in the glass, for I can generally tell if my cap is
straight by feeling. I'll tell you what I'll do--I'll cut off a
piece of my grey hair, and plait it together for a marker in my
Bible!" Miss Benson expected applause for this bright idea, but
Sally only made answer--
"You'll be taking to painting your cheeks next, now you've once
thought of dyeing your hair." So Miss Benson plaited her grey
hair in silence and quietness, Leonard holding one end of it
while she wove it, and admiring the colour and texture all the
time, with a sort of implied dissatisfaction at the auburn colour
of his own curls, which was only half-comforted away by Miss
Benson's information, that, if he lived long enough, his hair
would be like hers.
Mr. Benson, who had looked old and frail while he was yet but
young, was now stationary as to the date of his appearance. But
there was something more of nervous restlessness in his voice and
ways than formerly; that was the only change five years had
brought to him. And as for Sally, she chose to forget age and the
passage of years altogether, and had as much work in her, to use
her own expression, as she had at sixteen; nor was her appearance
very explicit as to the flight of time.
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