“Looks like an old Cameronian minister, that is true; but, my Peggy, you must not judge by appearances. Before you are--middle-aged, as you say, you will learn that appearances are not to be trusted to. And, by-the-way, what is it to be middle-aged? For my instruction I would like to know.” Margaret paused to think. She stood looking at him with the big book in her hand, leaning it against the table, embracing it with one arm; then, naturally, as she moved, her eyes sought the uncovered window, and went afar out into the silvery clouds to find her answer. As for her father, he sat with his ivory hands spread out on the arms of his chair, looking at her with a smile. Her slimness and gracefulness and soft-breathing youth were a refreshment to him. It was like the dew falling, like the morning breaking to the old man; and, besides the sense of freshness and new life, it was a perpetual amusement to him to watch the workings of her unaccustomed mind, and the thoughts that welled up in the creature’s face. He had perhaps never watched the growth of a young soul before, and he had never got over his first surprise and amusement at the idea that such a little being, only the other day a baby, only the other day running after a ball like a kitten, should think or have opinions at all. “Middle-aged,” said Margaret, with her pretty head upon one side, and great gravity in her face. “Perhaps, papa, you will not have the same idea as I have. Would it be twenty-five? That is not old, of course; but then it is not young either. If you were going to have any sense, I think you would have it by that age.” “Do you think so, my Peggy? That is but a little way to travel to get sense. Where is sense to be found, and can you tell me the place of understanding? It would be easily learned if it could be got at twenty-five.” “Oh, but twenty-five is a very good age, papa. Me-- I am only seventeen.” “And you think you have a good deal of sense already, and have found out whereabouts wisdom dwells?” said Sir Ludovic; “then, to be sure, in eight years more you will have gone a long way toward perfection.” “Papa, you are making a fool of me again.” “No, my dear, only admiring and wondering. It is such a long time since I was twenty-five; and I am not half so sure about a great many things as I was then. Perhaps you are right, my little Peggy; one changes one’s opinions often after--but it may be that just then you are at the crown of the brae. Far be it from me to pronounce a judgment. Dante puts it ten years later.” “But what Dante means,” said Margaret, boldly--for, ignorant as she was, she had read translations of many things, even of the Divine Comedy, not having, perhaps, anything more amusing to read, which was the origin of most of the better knowledge she possessed--“what Dante means was the half of life, when it was half done.” “Ay, ay, that was it,” said the old man, “half done! yet you see here I am, at seventy-five, still in everybody’s way.”