Aunt dear, could you tell me why my mistress sighed “poor fellow,” folded up the letter, and laid a rose I had just brought her from Covent-Garden upon it?--where, darling aunt (only think how it raised my spirits) I saw as good as thirty Irishwomen sitting on what we would call pratee baskets, shelling peas for the quality, and working away at the real Munster Irish, as if they had never left the quays of Cork. She put the rose on the letter, as if, in her thoughts, one had something to do with the other, and, resting her elbow on the table, shaded her face with her hand: after a time, a very long time, I came back into the room, and she was sitting the same way. “Wouldn’t you like a turn in the park, ma’am,” I said; “for a wonder it’s neither an east wind nor a pour of rain?” So she gazed up in my face, with that kind of mazed look which people have when you talk to them, and their thoughts are in deep sea or land graves--or, may-be, in the Eternity, to which they go before the spirit’s time. And what do you think she said?--why “poor fellow!” again. To be sure, thoughts are thoughts, and we had as good, may-be, forget the thought of many a thought we do think. That same evening she stood opposite the glass-- “Ellen,” she says, “I look very old.” “There’s a power of amiability in your face, ma’am,” I answers, “and you’ve a fine head-piece.” It’s true for me, and I thought I had got over the age beautifully; but I had not; she turned to look at it again: “I look very old, Ellen.” “God bless you! ma’am, age is a beauty to many.” “Not to me.” “There’s twenty opinions about the one thing.” “But I _am_ old.” “More of that to you, ma’am, dear.” “Do you wish me to be old?” “I wish you, with all my heart and soul, to _grow_ old,” I says, and from my heart I spoke, and she felt it; but, seeing she was melancholy, I thought to rouse her a bit. “Indeed, ma’am, I never saw you better in my life (that was true;) you’re as heavy again as you were when I first had the blessing of looking in yer sweet face, and sure your eyes are as bright as diamonds (that was a bit of a stretch,) and there’s thousands of dimples in your cheeks this minute (that was another).” “There, there,” she says, smiling her calm smile, “you will not have me old.” “Oh, the Holies forbid!” I said again, “it’s I that _will_ have you old--_but not yet_.”