"Why, you are not any older than I am!" "Do you think so ?" she inquired with a demure smile.

"I am very much older than you think." "You must be--I mean, you know, you must be older than you look." "Thank you," said Mrs.Goddard, still smiling, and just resting the tips of her fingers upon his arm as she stepped across a slippery place in the frozen road.

"Yes, I am a great deal older than you." John would have liked very much to ask her age, but even to his youthful and unsophisticated mind such a question seemed almost too personal.

He did not really believe that she was more than five years older than he, and that seemed to be no difference at all.
"I don't know," he said.

"I am nearly one and twenty." "Yes, I know," said Mrs.Goddard, who had heard every detail concerning John from Mr.Ambrose, again and again.