ottled past. So I was
driven, in the end, to studying myself long and intently in the
broken-hinged mirrors of my dressing-table. And I didn't find much
there to fortify my quailing spirit. I was getting on a bit. I was
curling up a little around the edges. There was no denying that fact.
For I could see a little fan-light of lines at the outer corner of
each eye. And down what Dinky-Dunk once called the honeyed corners of
my mouth went another pair of lines which clearly came from too much
laughing. But most unmistakably of all there was a line coming under
my chin, a small but tell-tale line, announcing the fact that I wasn't
losing any in weight, and standing, I suppose, one of the foot-hills
which precede the Rocky-Mountain dewlaps of old age. It wouldn't be
long, I could see, before I'd have to start watching my diet, and
looking for a white hair or two, and probably give up horseback
riding. And then settle down into an ingle-nook old dowager with a
hassock under _my_ feet and a creak in my knees and a fixed conviction
that young folks never acted up in _my_ youth as they act up
nowadays.

I tried to laugh it away, but my heart went down like a dredge-dipper.
Whereupon I set my jaw, which didn't make me look any younger. But I
didn't much care, for the mirror had already done its worst.

"Not muchee!" I said as I sat there making faces at myself. "You're
still one of the living. The bloom may be off in a place or two, but
you're sound to the core, and serviceable for many a year. So _sursum
corda! 'Rung ho! Hira Singh!_' as Chinkie taught us to shout in the
old polo days. And that means, Go in and win, Chaddie McKail, and die
with your boots on if you have to."

I was still intent on that study of my robust-looking but slightly
weather-beaten map when Dinky-Dunk walked in and caught me in the
middle of my Narcissus act.

"'All is vanity saith the Preacher,'" he began. But he stopped short
when I swung about at him. For I hadn't, after all, been able to
carpenter together even a whale-boat of consolation out of my wrecked
schooner of hope.

"Oh, Kakaibod," I wailed, "I'm a pie-faced old has-been, and nobody
will ever love me again!"

He only laughed, on his way out, and announced that I seemed to be
getting my share of loving, as things went. But he didn't take back
what he said about me being withered. And the first thing I shall do
to-morrow, when Gershom comes down to breakfast, will be to ask him
how o