Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

“ THE three old sisters, Rachel and Nancy and Camilla, lived in the house in which they had been born. They were very old in years—the youngest was nearly seventy—but they were, after all, the most youthful maidens in the village. Not a child dragging her doll-carriage past their windows, not a young girl strolling by in the twilight on her lover's arm, was as young as they, for the youth in them had actually triumphed over age, and gained, as it were, a species of immortality in this world. ”

“ Scanty ruffled skirts clinging to their wasted limbs the three wore, and low bodices and elbow sleeves, displaying pitilessly their withered necks and arms, from which all the sweet curves of youth had departed. ”

“ The old Beau, while looking, in his morning attire, not so very different from the modern man, clung always to his old costumes of state. When he crossed the road to the sisters of an afternoon he wore always his silk bell hat and blue swallow-tail coat, with bright brass buttons, and swung, with a fine courtly flourish of the past, an ancient ivory-headed cane. No one knew which of the sisters possessed the warmest affection of his faithful old heart. ”