Behind was a row of pointed firs , coming out darkly against the swimming pink sunset sky , not looking a day older than they had looked twenty years ago , when Nancy had been a young girl walking and dreaming in their shadows . The old willow to the left was as big and sweeping and , Nancy thought with a little shudder , probably as caterpillary , as ever . Nancy had learned many things in her twenty years of exile from Avonlea , but she had never learned to conquer her dread of caterpillars . `` Nothing is much changed , Louisa , '' she said , propping her chin on her plump white hands , and sniffing at the delectable odour of the bruised mint upon which Louisa was trampling . `` I 'm glad ; I was afraid to come back for fear you would have improved the old garden out of existence , or else into some prim , orderly lawn , which would have been worse . It 's as magnificently untidy as ever , and the fence still wobbles . It CA N'T be the same fence , but it looks exactly like it . No , nothing is much changed . Thank you , Louisa . '' Louisa had not the faintest idea what Nancy was thanking her for , but then she had never been able to fathom Nancy , much as she had always liked her in the old girlhood days that now seemed much further away to Louisa than they did to Nancy . Louisa was separated from them by the fulness of wifehood and motherhood , while Nancy looked back only over the narrow gap that empty years make . `` You have n't changed much yourself , Nancy , '' she said , looking admiringly at Nancy 's trim figure , in the nurse 's uniform she had donned to show Louisa what it was like , her firm , pink-and-white face and the the glossy waves of her golden brown hair . `` You 've held your own wonderfully well . '' `` Have n't I ? '' said Nancy complacently . `` Modern methods of massage and cold cream have kept away the crowsfeet , and fortunately I had the Rogerson complexion to start with . You would n't think I was really thirty-eight , would you ? Thirty-eight ! Twenty years ago I thought anybody who was thirty-eight was a perfect female Methuselah . And now I feel so horribly , ridiculously young , Louisa .
Every morning when I get up I have to say solemnly to myself three times , ` You 're an old maid , Nancy Rogerson , ' XXXXX tone myself down to anything like a becoming attitude for the day . ''
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