It was on the tip of my tongue to reply, "my interest is solely in old Juan and his daughter." But I didn't. It didn't seem quite fair, and wasn't strictly true. "Good-night," I said, withdrawing, "I'm glad she's all right." From his closing door his words floated back to me, "_Buenas noches, cara mia!_" Annunciata recovered, and to Sarah's outspoken disapproval I had her come often to the house. She sewed excellently, and embroidered even better, and I was glad to be able to give her small odds and ends of work to do. She was a lovely thing: rounded, and supple, with a clear, creamy-brown skin. But chancing one day to observe her mother on the road below the house I was smitten with a prophetic horror for Annunciata's future. For the woman, who could not have been more than thirty-five was as bent and gnarled as a Northerner of sixty, wrinkled like a monkey and with something of that creature's patient, if malicious wisdom in her eyes. I began to realize that Juan, too was according to our standards a man still in his early prime. I was confused by such an ordering of Nature. I said something of this to Bill but he only answered, knocking the ashes from his pipe. "Southern fruit ripens quickly." "It doesn't seem fair," I said, rebelliously, thinking of Annunciata and her slow, indolent grace. At sixteen I--but perhaps I was not a good example. "Our girls are children at sixteen," I told him. "You are a child at--what is it--twenty-two," he answered. I did not pursue the personal application further. But it was not right that this young thing should be a woman so soon, and so shortly destined to be old. Youth--and Age. There are no timid blossomings, no gracious gradations in the South.