24/38 Ten years in New York is worth fifty years in Monk-Rawdon, or Rawdon Court either." "Squire Percival was very fond of me. He thought I resembled you, grandmother, but he never admitted I was as handsome as you were." "Well, Ethel dear, you are handsome enough for the kind of men you'll pick up in this generation--most of them bald at thirty, wearing spectacles at twenty or earlier, and in spite of the fuss they make about athletics breaking all to nervous bits about fifty." "Grandmother, that is pure slander. I know some very fine young men, handsome and athletic both." "Beauty is a matter of taste, and as to their athletics, they can run a mile with a blacksmith, but when the thermometer rises to eighty-five degrees it knocks them all to pieces. They sit fanning themselves like schoolgirls, and call for juleps and ice-water. |