Zona Gale

“ She is a good deal bent, and she walks with a tall, white staff, silver-headed—the head being filled with two kinds of pills, though few know about that.
We were a great contrast, I suspect; for Miss Lillieblade is become a fairy-godmother-looking old lady; Polly Cleatam has taken on severity and poise and has conquered all obstacles but her dimples; Sally has developed into a grande dame of old lace and Roman mosaic pins, and I look for all the world like the plump grandmothers that they paint on calendars.
Peleas and Wilfred and Horace talked us over. ”

“ At sight of her blue gown, ruffled to the waist and laced with black velvet, I threw my arms about her, and we wellnigh laughed and cried together—for we both remembered how, before she was sure that Wilfred loved her, she had spent the night with me after a ball and had sat by the window, night long, in that very blue frock, weeping on my shoulder because Wilfred had danced so often with Polly Cleatam. ”

“ I've been restricted to 'Penelope,'" he explained, "ever since our Polly was born, and she's forty, and now her husband is condemned to the same practice. I dare say little Polly will rebuke us any day for undue familiarity. ”

“ Polly is adorable as an old lady—she has been a grandmother for nineteen years, and the offense is Enid's best friend. But whereas Sally and I have no idea of our own age, Polly, since her elopement, has rebounded into a Restraining Influence. That often happens—I think that the severest-looking women whom I know have eloped and come to think better of—everything else. The women who have no little histories like this never look severe. ”

“ She has grown old like an India-rubber ball, retaining some of her elasticity and constantly suggesting her former self, instead of becoming another article altogether. She has adopted caps—not soft, black old-lady caps, but perky little French affairs of white. ”