She used to cry: "Don't look at me, Kant. I know I'm like an
old gipsy woman."
"You look charming," I said, "in that old bonnet."
She put down the watering-can and laughingly took it from her head.
"It is a regular show."
"Not at all. You look charming when working in the greenhouse.... I
like you better like that than when you are dressed to go to
Brighton."
"Do you?... I thought you liked me best in my new black silk."
"I think I like you equally well at all times."
We looked at each other. There was an accent of love in our
friendship. "And strange, is it not," I said, "I did not admire you
half as much when I knew you first?"
"How was that? I was quite a young woman then."
"Yes," I said, regretting my own words; "but, don't you see, at that
time I was a mere boy--I lived in a dream, hardly seeing what passed
around me."
"Yes, of course," she said gaily, "you were so young then, all you saw
in me was a woman with a grown-up son."
Her dress was pinned up, she held in her hand the bonnet which she
said made her look like an old gipsy woman, and the sunlight fell on
the red hair, now grown a little thinner, but each of the immaculate
teeth was an elegant piece of statuary, and not a wrinkle was there on
that pretty, vixen-like face.
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