“We are young!  We are young!” they cried, exultingly.

Youth, like the extremity of age, had effaced the strongly-marked characteristics of middle life and mutually assimilated them all.  They were a group of merry youngsters almost maddened with the exuberant frolicsomeness of their years.  The most singular effect of their gayety was an impulse to mock the infirmity and decrepitude of which they had so lately been the victims.  They laughed loudly at their old-fashioned attire—­the wide-skirted coats and flapped waistcoats of the young men and the ancient cap and gown of the blooming girl.  One limped across the floor like a gouty grandfather; one set a pair of spectacles astride of his nose and pretended to pore over the black-letter pages of the book of magic; a third seated himself in an arm-chair and strove to imitate the venerable dignity of Dr. Heidegger.  Then all shouted mirthfully and leaped about the room.

The widow Wycherly—­if so fresh a damsel could be called a widow—­tripped up to the doctor’s chair with a mischievous merriment in her rosy face.

“Doctor, you dear old soul,” cried she, “get up and dance with me;” and then the four young people laughed louder than ever to think what a queer figure the poor old doctor would cut.

“Pray excuse me,” answered the doctor, quietly.  “I am old and rheumatic, and my dancing-days were over long ago.  But either of these gay young gentlemen will be glad of so pretty a partner.”

“Dance with me, Clara,” cried Colonel Killigrew.

“No, no!  I will be her partner,” shouted Mr. Gascoigne.

“She promised me her hand fifty years ago,” exclaimed Mr. Medbourne.

They all gathered round her.  One caught both her hands in his passionate grasp, another threw his arm about her waist, the third buried his hand among the glossy curls that clustered beneath the widow’s cap.  Blushing, panting, struggling, chiding, laughing, her warm breath fanning each of their faces by turns, she strove to disengage herself, yet still remained in their triple embrace.  Never was there a livelier picture of youthful rivalship, with bewitching beauty for the prize.  Yet, by a strange deception, owing to the duskiness of the chamber and the antique dresses which they still wore, the tall mirror is said to have reflected the figures of the three old, gray, withered grand-sires ridiculously contending for the skinny ugliness of a shrivelled grandam.  But they were young:  their burning passions proved them so.

Inflamed to madness by the coquetry of the girl-widow, who neither granted nor quite withheld her favors, the three rivals began to interchange threatening glances.  Still keeping hold of the fair prize, they grappled fiercely at one another’s throats.  As they struggled to and fro the table was overturned and the vase dashed into a thousand fragments.  The precious Water of Youth flowed in a bright stream across the floor, moistening the wings of a butterfly which, grown old in the decline of summer, had alighted there to die.  The insect fluttered lightly through the chamber and settled on the snowy head of Dr. Heidegger.