it. We oldsters are always fancying youth impatient, but there is
no time of life which has so much patience. It behaves as if it had
eternity before it--an eternity of youth--instead of a few days and
years, and then the frosty poll. We who are young no longer think
we would do so and so if we were young, as women think they would do
so and so if they were men; but if we were really young again, we
should not do at all what we think. We should not hurry to
experience our emotions; we should not press forward to discharge
our duties or repair our mistakes; we should not seize the occasion
to make a friend or reconcile an enemy; we should let weeks and
months go by in the realisation of a passion, and trust all sorts of
contingencies and accidents to help us out with its confession. The
thoughts of youth are very long, and its conclusions are deliberate
and delayed, and often withheld altogether. It is age which is
tremulously eager in these matters, and cannot wait with the fine
patience of nature in her growing moods.

As soon, even, as I was in the hotel I was impatient to press
through to the place where the dancing was, and where I already
heard the band playing. I knew very well that when we got there I
should have to sit down somewhere on the edge of the platform with
the other frumps and fogies, and begin taking cold in my dress-coat,
and want to doze off without being able to, while my young people
were waltzing together, or else promenading up and down ignoring me,
or recognising me by the offer of a fan, and the question whether I
was not simply melting; I have seen how the poor chaperon fares at
such times. But they, secure of their fun, were by no means
desirous to have it over, or even to have it begin. They dawdled
through the thronged hotel office, where other irresponsible pairs
were coming and going under the admiring eyes of the hotel loungers,