"You have kept your looks remarkably, my dear," she said. "You did not
lose them all at once, as I did; but isn't it a little audacious to try
to pass yourself off as a school-girl of seventeen?"

Mrs. Slater laughed. "But I once was she, if I am not now," she said.
"You won't deny that."

"I certainly shall deny it, with your permission," replied Ludington. "I
remember her very well, and she was no more an old woman like you than
you are a young girl like her."

Mrs. Slater laughed again. "How sharp you are getting, my dear!" she
said. "Since you are so close after me, I shall have to admit that I have
changed slightly in appearance in the forty odd years since we went to
school at Hilton, and I'll admit that my heart is even less like a girl's
than my face; but, though I have changed so much, I am still the same
person, I suppose."

"Which do you mean?" inquired Miss Ludington. "You say in one breath that
you are a changed person, and that you are the same person. If you are a
changed person you can't be the same, and if you are the same you can't
have changed."

"I should really like to know what you are driving at," said Mrs. Slater,
calmly. "It seems to me that we are disputing about words."

"Oh, no, not about words! It is a great deal more than a question of
words," exclaimed Miss Ludington. "You say that we old women and the
girls who sat here forty years and more ago are the same persons,