"Modern methods
of massage and cold cream have kept away the crowsfeet,
and fortunately I had the Rogerson complexion to start with.
You wouldn't think I was really thirty-eight, would you?
Thirty-eight! Twenty years ago I thought anybody who was thirty-eight
was a perfect female Methuselah. And now I feel so horribly,
ridiculously young, Louisa. Every morning when I get up I
have to say solemnly to myself three times, 'You're an old maid,
Nancy Rogerson,' to tone myself down to anything like a becoming
attitude for the day."
"I guess you don't mind being an old maid much," said Louisa,
shrugging her shoulders. She would not have been an old maid
herself for anything; yet she inconsistently envied Nancy
her freedom, her wide life in the world, her unlined brow,
and care-free lightness of spirit.
"Oh, but I do mind," said Nancy frankly. "I hate being an old maid."
"Why don't you get married, then?" asked Louisa, paying an unconscious
tribute to Nancy's perennial chance by her use of the present tense.
Nancy shook her head.
"No, that wouldn't suit me either. I don't want to be married.
Do you remember that story Anne Shirley used to tell long ago of the pupil
who wanted to be a widow because 'if you were married your husband
bossed you and if you weren't married people called you an old maid?'
Well, that is precisely my opinion.
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