I wonder. He helps me with the garden and so, and when I
go out to help somebody for a day or two he gets his own meals and tends
the chickens still. Some people thought a few years ago that he might
get work in the foundry, but I said I want him at home with me. He gets
a pension and we can live good on what we have without him slaving his
last years away, and him with one leg lost at Gettysburg!" she ended
proudly.

So Old Aaron continued to live his life as pleased his mate and himself.
He pottered about the house and garden and spent long hours musing under
the grape arbor. But there was one day in every year when Old Aaron
came into his own. Every Memorial Day he dressed in his venerated blue
uniform and carried the flag down the dusty streets of Greenwald, out to
the dustier road to a spot a mile from the heart of the town, where, on
a sunny hilltop, some of his comrades rested in the Silent City.

Only the infirm and the ill of the town failed to run to look as the
little procession passed down the street. There were boys in khaki, the
town band playing its best, volunteer firemen clad in vivid red shirts,
a low, hand-drawn wagon filled with flowers, an old cannon, also
hand-drawn, whose shots over the graves of the dead veterans would
thrill as they thrilled every May thirtieth--all received attention and
admiration from the watchers of the procession. But the real honors of
the day were accorded the "thin blue line of heroes," and Old Aaron was
one of these. To Granny Hogendobler, who walked with the crowd of
cheering children and adults and kept step on the sidewalk with the step
of the marchers on the street, it was evident that the standard bearer
was growing old. The steep climb near the cemetery entrance left him
breathless and flushed and each year Granny thought, "It's getting too
much for him to carry that flag." But each returning year she would have
spurned as earnestly as he any suggestion that another one be chosen to
carry that flag. And so every three hundred and sixty-fifth day the lean
straight figure of Old Aaron marched directly under the fluttering folds
of Old Glory and the soldier became a subject worthy of veneration,
then with customary nonchalance the little town forgot him again or
spoke of him as Old Aaron, a little lazy, a little shiftless, a little
childish, and Granny Hogendobler became the more important figure of
that household.

Granny was fifteen years younger than her husband