“So with poetry and prose. How can I possibly write,” he laughed, “if I can’t tell them apart? Why, nowadays I seem to get meshed in my own metres. No, I’m no true poet,” he shook his head ruefully, “if I can’t tell whether a poem is inside of me or outside of me, whether I am it, or it is I! No, old age is the time for seeing, not for singing.” He paused, thinking, “But I verily believe I like the seeing better than the singing.” He looked over to her in the old, quick boyish way, “Don’t you?” Lucy gave her little humorous shrug, inimitably slight, “O Henry, forgive me, I believe old age for me is all plain prose.” He laughed his silvery old laugh, in pure amusement, “And that from you, who know nothing whatever about old age!” “I! I know everything about old age!” “Prove it!” he rallied, “prove it! Prove that you know one thing more about old age to-day than you did when you were twenty!” Her face, still beautiful despite its subtlety of lines, grew strange, and her humorous lips delicately mocking, “No, I don’t believe I could--prove--that I know anything more about old age to-day--than I did when I was twenty!” “There,” he cried gaily, “you admit it?” “Admit what, my friend?” “That you are still a girl!” “Yet, a grandmother?” “One can never somehow remember that,” his gaze upon her changed to puzzled thought. “Yet I am a grandmother, a model mother and grandmother, I’d have you remember!” “It is very strange,” he mused, “mine, who are gone, seem almost nearer than yours, who are here. I sometimes have wondered why you never choose to go to them at Christmas-time. Although it is a happy thing for me that you do not.” “I prefer my Christmas to myself!” “But isn’t it lonely?” “Lonely, when you have never failed me, Henry!” she laughed. “You know I’m a stickler for old customs. I can’t change old friends for new grandchildren.” “Grandchildren!” he shook his head. “No, it is impossible to believe in them! You seem to me still Lucy Dwight of the long ago,” a twinkle danced in his eyes, “and aren’t you?” “Who can answer that question but Henry Collinton, of the long ago? Who else remembers?” They both remembered, and fell silent, joining thoughts. At length the Bishop, shining-eyed, exclaimed, “Those were great days, when I came here to college!” “Great days, yes, when I--when we--taught you the town. You thought everything so wonderful that you almost made me believe Westbury wonderful, too.” “And didn’t you, don’t you, believe it wonderful?” She looked at him quietly, “But Westbury is my own,” she answered. “And isn’t it,” he pleaded, “my own, too, by this time?” “Yours?” she looked at him with far, intent eyes, then before his wide child-gaze, troubled, her smile flashed reassurance, “Yours, surely, Henry!” again she fell thoughtful, “yet it depends a little on what you mean!” “Westbury _has_ been mine,” he maintained, and then, not confident, “and Westbury has not changed, has it, Lucy?” She was silent.