on't see ten years' difference
between his youth and his age, for we live in slow, quiet times, and
nothing ever happens to mark the years as they go by, one after the
other, and all the same.

"I lodged in a house for a great many years, and a little girl grew
up there, the daughter of my landlady. She used to slide down the
bannisters very well, and she used to play the piano very badly. These
two things worried me many a time. She used to bring me my meals in the
morning and the evening, and often enough she'd stop to talk with me
while I was eating. She was a very chatty girl and I was a talkative
person myself. When she was about eighteen years of age I got so used
to her that if her mother came with the food I would be worried for
the rest of the day. Her face was as bright as a sunbeam, and her lazy,
careless ways, big, free movements, and girlish chatter were pleasant to
a man whose loneliness was only beginning to be apparent to him through
her company. I've thought of it often since, and I suppose that's how it
began. She used to listen to all my opinions and she'd agree with them
because she had none of her own yet. She was a good girl, but lazy in
her mind and body; childish, in fact. Her talk was as involved as her
actions: she always seemed to be sliding down mental bannisters; she
thought in kinks and spoke in spasms, hopped mentally from one subject
to another without the slightest difficulty, and could use a lot of
language in saying nothing at all. I could see all that at the time, but
I suppose I was too pleased with my own sharp business brains, and
sick enough, although I did not know it, of my sharp-brained, business
companions--dear Lord! I remember them well. It's easy enough to have
brains as they call it, but it is not so easy to have a little gaiety
or carelessness or childishness or whatever it was she had. It is good,
too, to feel superior to some one, even a girl.

"One day this thought came to me--'It is time that I settled down.' I
don't know where the idea came from; one hears it often enough and it
always seems to apply to some one else, but I don't know what brought
it to roost with me. I was foolish, too: I bought ties and differently
shaped collars, and took to creasing my trousers by folding them under
the bed and lying on them all night--It never struck me that I was more
than three times her age. I brought home sweets for her and she was
delighted. She said she adored sweets, and