"Yes, easy enough when you want to see us, and not too easy if you don't. We seem to want a house of our own in which to spend our declining years, surrounded by all the fads that we most affect: and we can't find them quite all in houses built by other people. Of course we shan't find them all in the house we build ourselves, but then we shall only have ourselves to blame, and that makes one so much more merciful and lenient. We couldn't get a freehold site that was exactly what we both wanted, and as we have no children it doesn't signify: as a matter of fact, a leasehold peerage would have done just as well for us." I noted the faint quiver in her voice with a pang of sympathy. I too felt that life would never be quite complete as long as Ponty reigned alone in the old nursery at Restham. "I was saying the other day to a woman I know that we had taken the place on a ninety-nine years' lease," Isabel went on, "and she said, 'Only ninety-nine years, Lady Chayford? I heard it was nine hundred and ninety-nine!' 'Well,' I answered, 'you see my husband and I are no longer young: had we been, of course we should have taken it on a nine hundred and ninety-nine years' lease, as you suggest: but at our age we think ninety-nine will see us out.' Did you ever know such an ass?" I laughed. "People really are very idiotic. It is a pity we can't tell them so, and then they might improve. Nobody tells us of our faults after we grow up, so how can we be expected to cure them?" "Don't they?" said Isabel. "Wait till you've been married a little longer." "I see you are as great a cynic as ever," I retorted. "Time doesn't seem to have mellowed you at all! But, joking apart, I do think it is a pity that grown-up people won't stand being told of their faults." "But they do stand it quite well--in fact, they rather enjoy it; provided, of course, that you never tell them of those they've really got. For instance, I was quite pleased when you said Time hadn't mellowed me--knowing all the while that my heart is really of the consistency of an over-ripe banana." Again I laughed with pleasure to find her so little altered by time and circumstance, and then we ceased to talk of our private affairs and turned our attention to the affairs of our neighbours, discussing what had happened respecting them since we saw each other last--who had died and who had lived, and who had married wisely and who not so well. And then we went on to public events, and discussed the divisions in our midst at home, and the war-clouds already gathering in the skies abroad. "Yes, we live in stirring times," said Lady Chayford, as we retraced our steps homewards through the Garden of Dreams, having settled the fate of nations: "and I'm afraid they are going to stir more and more. I don't like living in stirring times. They don't suit me at all. I am getting too old for them, I suppose."