"And you are suddenly a wise old graybeard?"
This old graybeard may be a good, honest man, but nobody but the rebels would have made him a general.
They were not many: one old graybeard, a few much younger, men and women with plaited hair and pale, calm faces.
Some old graybeards will go on for cycles!
"You've seen battle," an old graybeard, seeming to be the skipper of the fishing boat, reasoned.
But he's grown now and should be about his own life without the specter of a grumbling old graybeard hovering behind him.
Best to tell him her ideas before those mossy old graybeards in the council chamber had a chance to get at him.
But the old graybeard could do little to help his friend.
"Small glory I'd win out of skewering you, old graybeard."
"Ye got to be kidding," the old graybeard remarked.