“Still harping, but harping your praises.  Century plants are not necessarily old:  they are all young at the beginning!  I merely meant you’d be blooming at a hundred.”

“You are a sly old fox,” she retorted with a spirit.  “You give a woman a dig on her age and then try to make her think it a compliment.”

“I gave myself a dig that time:  the remark had to be excavated,” he said aloud but as though confidentially to himself.  Open disrespect marked his speech and manner with her always; and sooner or later she exacted full punishment.

Meantime he had reached the steps.  There he stopped and taking off his straw hat looked up and shook it reproachfully at the heavens.

“What a night, what a night!” he exclaimed.  “And what an injustice to a man wading up to his knees in life’s winters.”

“How do you do,” she said impatiently, always finding it hard to put up with his lingerings and delays.  “Are you coming in?”

“Thank you, I believe I am.  But no, wait.  I’ll not come in until I have made a speech.  It never occurred to me before and it will never again.  It’s now or never.

“The life of man should last a single year.  He should have one spring for birth and childhood, for play and growth, for the ending of his dreams and the beginning of his love.  One summer for strife and toil and passion.  One autumn in which to gather the fruits of his deeds and to live upon them, be they sweet or bitter.  One winter in which to come to an end and wrap himself with resignation in the snows of nature.  Thus he should never know the pain of seeing spring return when there was nothing within himself to bud or be sown.  Summer would never rage and he have no conflicts nor passions.  Autumn would not pass and he with idle hands neither give nor gather.  And winter should not end without extinguishing his tormenting fires, and leaving him the peace of eternal cold.”

“Really,” she cried, “I have never heard anything as fine as that since I used to write compositions at boarding-school.”

“It may be part of one of mine!” he replied.  “We forget ourselves, you know, and then we think we are original.”

“Second childhood,” she suggested.  “Are you really coming in?”

“I am, madam,” he replied.  “And guided by your suggestion, I come as a second child.”

When he had reached the top step, he laid his hat and cane on the porch and took her hands in his—­pressing them abstemiously.

“Excuse me if I do not press harder,” he said, lowering his voice as though he fancied they might be overheard.  “I know you are sensitive in these little matters; but while I dislike to appear lukewarm, really, you know it is too late to be ardent,” and he looked at her ardently.

She twisted her fingers out of his with coy shame.

“What an old fox,” she repeated gayly.

“Well, you know what goes with the fox—­the foxess, or the foxina.”