He's afeard of you," he continued.
"He lets you be." "Friend, thee knows I am almost an old woman now." She made marks abstractedly upon the corner of a piece of paper.

"Unless my hair turns grey presently I must bleach it, for 'twill seem improper it should remain so brown." She smoothed it back with her hand.

Try as she would to keep it trim after the manner of her people, it still waved loosely on her forehead and over her ears.

And the grey bonnet she wore but added piquancy to its luxuriance, gave a sweet gravity to the demure beauty of the face it sheltered.
"I am thirty now," she murmured, with a sigh, and went on writing.
The old man's fingers moved quickly among the strips of cane, and, after a silence, without raising his head, he said: "Thirty, it means naught." "To those without understanding," she rejoined drily.
"'Tis tough understanding why there's no wedding-ring on yonder finger.
There's been many a man that's wanted it, that's true--the Squire's son from Bridgley, the lord of Axwood Manor, the long soldier from Shipley Wood, and doctors, and such folk aplenty.

There's where understanding fails." Faith's face flushed, then it became pale, and her eyes, suffused, dropped upon the paper before her.