Laughing, when she spoke of the humiliating possibility of a wheel chair, I said, “Miss Pride, you should bone up on those Thibetans who claim they know how to live two centuries or so.” I was recalling a photograph I had seen in a newspaper of a Hindu, said to have been born in 1786, making him a century and a half old. The broad, bald skull had looked like a death’s-head and the drooping eyes had been tenantless, mere vacant openings in round pits of black shadows. The long dark lips were stretched in a hideous grimace, not of scorn for the photographer but of a corrupt delight in the pyrrhic victory of flesh over time. The caption had read, “Says He Will Live Till 2000 or After.”

“I should hope not!” she exclaimed. “Do you think I want to see Boston turned into a hive of Customs Houses and aeroplanes replacing automobiles? No, thank you. I don’t fancy myself rocketing about in the air with Mac at the controls. A century is too long for anyone to live. To go beyond that is my idea of anticipating Judgment Day. Tomorrow afternoon at Mrs. McAllister’s, you will possibly meet a Mr. Childreth who is the oldest living graduate of Harvard College. He was of the class of ’67. Although he still has his own teeth—they’re no beauties, however—he has quite lost his reason and reads books written for children. It always strikes me as ironical that on Commencement Day he marches at the head of the Harvard procession when he barely knows his A.B.C.’s.”

“But you won’t be like that, Miss Pride.”

“I’m not at all sure. If I am, though, I hope you’ll have the goodness to lock me up. Even my father, a most sensible man, got notions toward the end. He confused me with my sister Charity and believed that neither of us was his daughter but that our surname was Fleet. ‘Charity Fleet,’ he would say to me, ‘I want you to take my green bag which is full of peanuts and go feed the squirrels in the Common.’ He had never fed a squirrel in his life, and until he was in his dotage always referred to them as ‘the Common rodents.’ And of course his bag hadn’t so much as a peanut shell in it, but only his rice-paper books.”

She fell silent, thinking perhaps of her father, and I started toward the door to leave her to her reverie, but she looked up. “I don’t know how I started on that digression. We were talking about your friends, or rather, your friends-to-be. I dare say it isn’t my place to say this as it’s the duty of one’s mother, but since yours is not accessible, I must look upon myself as your guardian. To put it bluntly, Sonia, you don’t consider marrying, do you?”