's gay voice said:

"And what of that, dear? When I was six, you were sixteen. When I was
twenty, you were twenty-nine----"

"Thirty, Boy; thirty! Be accurate. And now--you are twenty-six, and I
am getting on towards forty----"

"Thirty-six, dear, thirty-six! Be accurate!" pleaded the Boy.

"And when you are forty, I shall be fifty; and when you are fifty,
Boy--only fifty; a man is in his prime at fifty--I shall be sixty."

"And when I am eighty," said the Boy, "you will be ninety--an old lady
is in her prime at ninety. What a charming old couple we shall be! I
wonder if we shall still play tennis. I think quite the jolliest thing
to do, when we are very _very_ old--quite decrepit, you know--will be
to stay at Folkestone, and hire two bath-chairs, with nice active old
men to draw them; ancient, of course, but they would seem young
compared to us; and then make them race on the Leas, a five-pound note
to the winner, to insure them really galloping. We would start at the
most crowded time, when the band was playing, and race in and out among
lots of other bath-chairs going slowly, and simply terrified at us.
Let's be sure and remember to do it, Christobel, sixty years from
to-day. Have you a pocket-book? I shall be a gay young person of
eighty-six, and you----"

"Boy dear," she said, bending over him, with a catch in her voice; "you
_must_ be serious and listen. When I have said that which I must say,
you will understand directly that it is no use having your seven days.
It will be better and wiser to raise the siege at once, and march away.
Listen! ... Hush, stay perfectly still. No; I can say what I am going
to say more easily if you don't look at me.... Please, Boy;
_please_.... I told you my 'Little Boy Blue stories' to make you
realize how very much older I am than you. I was practically grown up,
when you were still a dear delightful baby. I could have picked you up
in my arms and carried you about. Oh, _cannot_ you see that, however
much I loved him--perhaps I should rather say: just _because_ I love
him, because I have always wanted to help him carry his heavy stones;
make the best of his life, and accomplish manfully the tasks he sets
himself to do--I could not possibly marry my Little Boy Blue? I could
not, oh I _could_ not, let him tie his youth and brightness to a woman,
staid and middle-aged, who might almost be his mother!"

The earnest, anxious voice, eager in its determined insist