d only," we are told, "wear white in early youth and old age.
It is very becoming with a fresh complexion or white hair. When you no
longer feel as young as you were, other colours are more flattering.
Also, you should avoid bright lights and worry."

Here, the beauty specialist reminds you of the specialist who says in
winter, "Avoid wet feet and germs." In spite of both, we are still
subjected to sunshine and anxiety and rain and microbes.

But there are risks which the would-be young can and should avoid.
Surely Miss Wilcox ought to have known better than to flop down on the
grass with an effort and a bump, clasping (with some difficulty) her
knees because Vera, who is sixteen, slim and lithe, with the gawky grace
of a young colt, had made such an obvious success of the operation!

It is better not to sit on the grass after thirty when sprawling at all
is difficult, let alone sprawling gracefully.

Poor Miss Wilcox! At seventeen she had been a pretty, bouncing girl with
bright blue eyes, bright pink cheeks and brighter yellow hair. All the
young men of the neighbourhood had kissed her in conservatories or
bushes and to each in turn, she had answered, "Well, I never!"

Then an era of intellectual indifference to the world set in. She read
Milton in a garret and ate very little. When addressed, she gave the
impression of being suddenly dragged down from some sublime pinnacle of
thought. This was the period of absent-mindedness, of untidiness, of
unpunctuality, for she was convinced that these three ingredients
compose the spiritual life. But it was not a success. True, her cheeks
lost their roses, but without attaining an interesting transparent
whiteness and her figure became angular, rather than thin. Cold food,
ugly clothes and enforced isolation began to lose their charms and Miss
Wilcox abandoned the intellectual life.

She discovered that men were her only interest--probably she had always
known it. Even the curate, who was like a curate on the stage, was
glorified into an adventurous possibility from the mere fact that he
belonged to that strange, tropical species--the other sex.

Unfortunately, Miss Wilcox, who was practical and orderly, knew just
"what men liked in a woman." It was, it appeared, necessary to be
bright--relentlessly bright, with a determined, irrelevant cheerfulness
which no considerations of appropriateness could check and it was
necessary to have "something to say for yourself" which in