"Poor old Patton, he do get slow on his legs, don't you, Patton?
But there, there's no helping it when you're turned of eighty." And she turned upon him a bright, philosophic eye, being herself a young thing not much over seventy, and energetic accordingly.

Mrs.Jellison passed for the village wit, and was at least talkative and excitable beyond her fellows.
"Well, _you_ don't seem to mind getting old, Mrs.Jellison," said Marcella, smiling at her.
The eyes of all the old people round their tea-table were by now drawn irresistibly to Miss Boyce in the chimney corner, to her slim grace, and the splendour of her large black hat and feathers.

The new squire's daughter had so far taken them by surprise.

Some of them, however, were by now in the second stage of critical observation--none the less critical because furtive and inarticulate.
"Ah ?" said Mrs.Jellison, interrogatively, with a high, long-drawn note peculiar to her.

"Well, I've never found you get forrarder wi' snarlin' over what you can't help.