I'd like to be a widow. Then I'd
have the freedom of the unmarried, with the kudos of the married.
I could eat my cake and have it, too. Oh, to be a widow!"
"Nancy!" said Louisa in a shocked tone.
Nancy laughed, a mellow gurgle that rippled through the garden
like a brook.
"Oh, Louisa, I can shock you yet. That was just how you used to say
'Nancy' long ago, as if I'd broken all the commandments at once."
"You do say such queer things," protested Louisa, "and half the time
I don't know what you mean."
"Bless you, dear coz, half the time I don't myself.
Perhaps the joy of coming back to the old spot has slightly
turned my brain, I've found my lost girlhood here.
I'm NOT thirty-eight in this garden--it is a flat impossibility.
I'm sweet eighteen, with a waist line two inches smaller.
Look, the sun is just setting. I see he has still his old
trick of throwing his last beams over the Wright farmhouse.
By the way, Louisa, is Peter Wright still living there?"
"Yes." Louisa threw a sudden interested glance at the
apparently placid Nancy.
"Married, I suppose, with half a dozen children?"
said Nancy indifferently, pulling up some more sprigs of mint
and pinning them on her breast.
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