"It's a queer thing that _all_ the Elizabeths in the world have been nasty--Queen Elizabeth and--and"--failing to find another historical instance, he concluded rather lamely, pointing with his paint-brush at his sister--"you!" "This," Mr. Townshend remarked, "is a most unprovoked attack!" "Little toad," said Elizabeth, looking kindly at her young brother. "Ah, well, Buff, when you are old and grey and full of years and meet with ingratitude----" "When I'm old," said Buff callously, "you'll very likely be dead!" She laughed. "I dare say. Anyway, I hope I don't live to be _very_ old." "Why?" Mr. Stevenson asked her. "Do you dread old age? I suppose all women do." "Why women more than men?" Elizabeth's voice was pugnacious. "Oh, well--youth's such an asset to a woman. It must be horrible for a beautiful woman to see her beauty go." "'Beauty is but a flower Which wrinkles will devour,'" Arthur quoted, as he rose to look at Buff's drawing. Elizabeth sat up very straight. "Oh! If you look at life from that sort of 'from-hour-to-hour-we-ripe-and-ripe-and-then--from-hour-to-hour-we-rot-and-rot' attitude, it is a tragic thing to grow old. But surely life is more than just a blooming and a decay. Life seems to me like a Road--oh! I don't pretend to be original--a road that is always going round corners. And when we are quite young we expect to find something new and delightful round every turn. But the Road gets harder as we get farther along it, and there are often lions in the path, and unpleasant surprises meet us when we turn the corners; and it isn't always easy to be kind and honest and keep a cheerful face, and lines come, and wrinkles. But if the lines come from being sorry for others, and the wrinkles from laughing at ourselves, then they are kind lines and happy wrinkles, and there is no sense in trying to hide them with paint and powder." "Dear me," Mr. Seton said, regarding his daughter with an amused smile. "You preach with vigour, Lizbeth. I am glad you value beauty so lightly." "But I don't. I think beauty matters frightfully all through one's life, and even when one is dead. Think how you delight to remember beloved lovely people! The look in the eyes, the turn of the head, the way they moved and laughed--all the grace of them.... But I protest against the littleness of mourning for the passing of beauty. As my dentist says, truly if prosaically, we all come to a plate in the end; but I don't mean to be depressed about myself, no matter how hideous I get." Mr. Townshend pointed out that the depression would be more likely to lie with the onlookers, and Buff, who always listened when his idol spoke, laughed loudly at the sally. "Haw," he said, "Elizabeth thinks she's beautiful!" "No," his sister assured him, "I don't think I'm beautiful; but, as Marget--regrettably complacent--says of herself spiritually, 'Faigs! I'm no' bad!'"