isturbance, but not entirely appreciating
their own share in it, the two girls somewhat wickedly prolonged the
interview by following him into the garden.

"Well, if you MUST leave now," said Esther, at last, languidly, "it
ain't much out of your way to go down through the garden and take a
look at pa as you go. He's somewhere down there, near the woods, and
we don't like to leave him alone too long. You might pass the time of
day with him; see if he's right side up. Vashti and I have got a heap
of things to fix here yet; but if anything's wrong with him, you can
call us. So-long."

Don Caesar was about to excuse himself hurriedly; but that sudden and
acute perception of all kindred sorrow which belongs to refined
suffering, checked his speech. The loneliness of the helpless old man
in this atmosphere of active and youthful selfishness touched him. He
bowed assent, and turned aside into one of the long perspectives of
bean-poles. The girls watched him until out of sight.

"Well," said Vashti, "don't tell ME. But if there wasn't something
between him and that Mamie Mulrady, I don't know a jilted man when I
see him."

"Well, you needn't have let him SEE that you knew it, so that any
civility of ours would look as if we were ready to take up with her
leavings," responded Esther, astutely, as the girls reentered the house.

Meantime, the unconscious object of their criticism walked sadly down
the old market-garden, whose rude outlines and homely details he once
clothed with the poetry of a sensitive man's first love. Well, it was a
common cabbage field and potato patch after all. In his disgust he
felt conscious of even the loss of that sense of patronage and
superiority which had invested his affection for a girl of meaner
condition. His self-respect was humiliated with his love. The soil
and dirt of those wretched cabbages had clung to him, but not to her.
It was she who had gone higher; it was he who was left in the vulgar
ruins of his misplaced passion.

He reached the bottom of the garden without observing any sign of the
lonely invalid. He looked up and down the cabbage rows, and through
the long perspective of pea-vines, without result. There was a newer
trail leading from a gap in the pines to the wooded hollow, which
undoubtedly intersected the little path that he and Mamie had once
followed from the high road. If the old man had taken this trail he
had possibly over-tasked his strength, and th