She was glad enough when Lizzie came to her; she still liked Lizzie best.
They would sit together, one on each side of the fireplace, talking.
Harriett's voice came thinly through her thin lips, precise yet plaintive,
Lizzie's finished with a snap of the bent-in jaws.

"Do you remember those little round hats we used to wear? You had one
exactly like mine. Connie couldn't wear them."

"We were wild young things," said Lizzie. "I was wilder than you.... A
little audacious thing."

"And look at us now--we couldn't say 'Bo' to a goose.... Well, we may be
thankful we haven't gone stout like Connie Pennefather."

"Or poor Sarah. That stoop."

They drew themselves up. Their straight, slender shoulders rebuked
Connie's obesity, and Sarah's bent back, her bodice stretched hump-wise
from the stuck-out ridges of her stays.

Harriett was glad when Lizzie went and left her to Maggie and the house.
She always hoped she wouldn't stay for tea, so that Maggie might not have
an extra cup and plate to wash.

The years passed: the sixty-third, sixty-fourth, sixty-fifth; their
monotony mitigated by long spells of torpor and the sheer rapidity of
time. Her mind was carried on, empty, in empty, flying time. She had a
feeling of dryness and distension in all her being, and a sort of
crepitation in her brain, irritating her to yawning fits. After meals,