had been to her the soul of kindliness
and courtesy ever since she had come to the bluff to live. He might
forget to come to his meals,--forget, in fact, whether he had eaten
them or not; he might venture forth into the village with one gray sock
and one blue one; or when part way to the post-office become lost in
reverie and return home again without ever reaching his destination.
Such incidents had happened and were likely to happen again.
Nevertheless, notwithstanding his absentmindedness, he was never too
much absorbed to maintain toward Celestina an old-fashioned deference
very appealing to one accustomed to being ignored and slighted.

The impulse, it was quite obvious, was prompted less by conventionality
than by a knightliness of heart, and Celestina, who had never before
been the recipient of such courtesies, found herself inexpressibly
touched by the trifling attentions. Often she speculated as to whether
this mental attitude toward all womanhood was one Willie himself had
evolved or whether it was the result of standards instilled into his
sensitive consciousness by the women who had been his companions
through life,--his mother, his aunt, his sister. Whichever the case
there was no question that the old man's bearing toward her placed her
on a pinnacle where gossip was silenced, and transformed her humble
ministrations from those of a hireling into acts of graciousness and
beauty.

Moreover to live in the same house with such an optimist was no
ordinary experience. Well Celestina remembered the day when at dinner
the little old man had choked violently, turning purple in the face in
his fight for breath. She had rushed to his side, terror-stricken, but
between his spasms of coughing the inventor had gasped out:

"Why make so much fuss over what's gone down the wrong way, Tiny?
Think--of--the--things--I've--swallered--all--these--years--that
have--gone down--right!"

The observation was characteristic of Willie's creed of life. He never
emphasized the exceptions but always the big, fine, elemental good in
everything.

Even the name by which he went had been bestowed on him by the
community as a term of endearment. There were, to be sure, other men
in the hamlet whose names had passed into diminutives. There was, for
example, Seth Crocker, whose wife explained that she called him Sethie
"for short." But Sethie's name was never pronounced with the same
affectionate drawl that Willie's was.

No,