e she had sometimes had it in
childhood in specially swift springs, when the lilacs and the syringes
seemed to rush out into blossom in a single night, but it was strange
to have it again after over fifty years. She would have liked to
remark on the sensation to some one, but she was ashamed. It was such
an absurd sensation at her age. Yet oftener and oftener, and every day
more and more, did Mrs. Fisher have a ridiculous feeling as if she were
presently going to burgeon.

Sternly she tried to frown the unseemly sensation down. Burgeon,
indeed. She had heard of dried staffs, pieces of mere dead wood,
suddenly putting forth fresh leaves, but only in legend. She was not
in legend. She knew perfectly what was due to herself. Dignity
demanded that she should have nothing to do with fresh leaves at her
age; and yet there it was--the feeling that presently, that at any
moment now, she might crop out all green.

Mrs. Fisher was upset. There were many things she disliked more
than anything else, and one was when the elderly imagined they felt
young and behaved accordingly. Of course they only imagined it, they
were only deceiving themselves; but how deplorable were the results.
She herself had grown old as people should grow old--steadily and
firmly. No interruptions, no belated after-glows and spasmodic
returns. If, after all these years, she were now going to be deluded
into some sort of unsuitable breaking-out, how humiliating.

Indeed she was thankful, that second week, that Kate Lumley was
not there. It would be most unpleasant, should anything different
occur in her behaviour, to have Kate looking on. Kate had known her
all her life. She felt she could let herself go--here Mrs. Fisher
frowned at the book she was vainly trying to concentrate on, for where
did that expression come from?--much less painfully before strangers
than before an old friend. Old friends, reflected Mrs. Fisher, who
hoped she was reading, compare one constantly with what one used to be.
They are always doing it if one develops. They are surprised at
development. They hark back; they expect motionlessness after, say,
fifty, to the end of one's days.

That, thought Mrs. Fisher, her eyes going steadily line by line
down the page and not a word of it getting through into her
consciousness, is foolish of friends. It is condemning one to a
premature death. One should continue (of course with dignity) to
develop, however old one ma