2 Quotes by Mollie Panter-Downes

He looked at her amiably, as though she were a nice sofa. That must be the penalty of the grey hairs, the tired shadows under the eyes, that must be the beginning of getting old. She had noticed it. Young men looked at you as though you were a nice sofa, an article of furniture which they would never be desirous of acquiring.

She glanced round the garden. It was perfect, she thought. They were always gloomy about it, her mother and father. Terrible, terrible, they said – as though a few old weeds mattered! She liked it shaggy, its lawns white with daisies, the golden rod and the aster making tunnels of green gloom through which one could creep comfortably. But in the grown-up world, isolated behind the glass partition, such things counted.