"Yes, even when they indulge a show of deference, they contrive to blow ourgray hairs about our wrinkled temples."

"Don't talk about gray hairs. You have none; and mine are not always seenat first glance."

"Medora begins to tax me with a few. Don't you see any?"

"Not one. I concentrate on my own. Tush, you're only forty-seven."

"0r fifty-seven, or sixty-seven, or seventy-seven...." Foster adjusted hisgreen shade and attempted an easier disposition of his twisted limbs on thecouch. "Well, forty-seven, as you suggest,--as you insist. How very very aged is thisyoung fellow?"

"Twenty-four or twenty-five."

"Well, they can make us seem either youthfuler or very ageder. That rests withourselves. It's all in how we take them, I expect."

"Better take them so as to make ourselves younger."

"Then the other question."

"How they take us?"