I followed her to the house agent’s, and this, if you please, was the first question she put to him—
“What sort of people do you think’ll take the house over the way?”
I pitied the house agent from the bottom of my heart, because how on earth could he know? Yet upon his answer hung all his chances of letting. I thought he replied very cleverly.
“They’re sure to be good people,” said he; “we only get the best class round here.”
“But you can’t tell,” said she. “What’s the good of pretending you know. It might be a butcher and his family. You couldn’t stop them if they wanted the house.”
The agent leaned back in his chair, then leaned forward over his desk, turning over pages and pages of a ledger.
“Well, will you take an order to view this one?” said he. “Same rent—a little more accommodation.”
“No, I don’t want to see any more,” she replied. “This is the one I like best.”
“Well, would you like to settle on that?” said the agent. “I’ll write to the landlord to-night.”
For three weeks she has gone on just like this.
And it is still to let, that little house in the bowl of my old apple tree. But every morning she comes just the same and, sitting on the topmost branch, she chatters to herself incessantly for half an hour, as starlings and women do—for she is a lady starling. I shall be curious to know when she makes up her mind, but, knowing nothing about women and less than nothing about starlings, I cannot say when or what it will be.
She thanked God, she told me, that she had never been married.
She was quite old—well, quite old? Can you ever say that of a woman? Women are quite old for five years, but that is all. They are quite old between the ages of thirty-five and forty. Then, if God has given them a heart and they have taken advantage of the gift, youth comes back again. It is not the youth under the eyes, perhaps; it is the youth in the eyes. It is not the youth around the lips; it is the youth of the words that issue from them.
Between thirty-five and forty a woman is trying to remember her youth and forget her age. That makes her quite old—quite, quite old. After that—well, I have said, it rests with God and her.
So Miss Taviner was not quite old. She was quite young. She was sixty-three. Her eyes twinkled, even when she thanked God for her spinsterdom.