cupied herself largely with
Owgooste and the twins, who had been given a table by themselves--the
black walnut table before which the ceremony had taken place. The little
dressmaker was continually turning about in her place, inquiring of the
children if they wanted for anything; inquiries they rarely answered
other than by stare, fixed, ox-like, expressionless.

Suddenly the little dressmaker turned to Old Grannis and exclaimed:

"I'm so very fond of little children."

"Yes, yes, they're very interesting. I'm very fond of them, too."

The next instant both of the old people were overwhelmed with confusion.
What! They had spoken to each other after all these years of silence;
they had for the first time addressed remarks to each other.

The old dressmaker was in a torment of embarrassment. How was it she had
come to speak? She had neither planned nor wished it. Suddenly the words
had escaped her, he had answered, and it was all over--over before they
knew it.

Old Grannis's fingers trembled on the table ledge, his heart beat
heavily, his breath fell short. He had actually talked to the little
dressmaker. That possibility to which he had looked forward, it
seemed to him for years--that companionship, that intimacy with his
fellow-lodger, that delightful acquaintance which was only to ripen at
some far distant time, he could not exactly say when--behold, it had
suddenly come to a head, here in this over-crowded, over-heated room,
in the midst of all this feeding, surrounded by odors of hot dishes,
accompanied by the sounds of incessant mastication. How different he had
imagined it would be! They were to be alone--he and Miss Baker--in the
evening somewhere, withdrawn from the world, very quiet, very calm and
peaceful. Their talk was to be of their lives, their lost illusions, not
of other people's children.

The two old people did not speak again. They sat there side by side,
nearer than they had ever been before, motionless, abstracted; their
thoughts far away from that scene of feasting. They were thinking of
each other and they were conscious of it. Timid, with the timidity of
their second childhood, constrained and embarrassed by each other's
presence, they were, nevertheless, in a little Elysium of their own
creating. They walked hand in hand in a delicious garden where it was
always autumn; together and alone they entered upon the long retarded
romance of their commonplace and uneventful lives.

At last tha