omfort in the Old Men's Hum, an' Angeline, she's a-eatin' her heart out
in the poorhouse!'"

Angeline had, indeed, determined to be the one to go to the poorhouse;
but all her life long she had cared, perhaps to a faulty degree, for
"what folks would say." Above all, she cared now for what they had said
and what they still might say about her husband and this final ending to
his down-hill road. She rested her two hands on the table and looked
hard at the apple-sauce until it danced before her eyes. She could not
think with any degree of clearness. Vaguely she wondered if their supper
would dance out of sight before they could sit down to eat it. So many
of the good things of life had vanished ere she and Abe could touch
their lips to them. Then she felt his shaking hand upon her shoulder and
heard him mutter with husky tenderness:

"My dear, this is the fust chance since we've been married that I've had
to take the wust of it. Don't say a word agin it naow, Mother, don't
yer. I've brought yer ter this pass. Lemme bear the brunt o' it."

Ah, the greatest good of all had not vanished, and that was the love
they bore one to the other. The sunshine came flooding back into
Mother's heart. She lifted her face, beautiful, rosy, eternally young.
This was the man for whom she had gladly risked want and poverty, the
displeasure of her own people, almost half a century ago. Now at last
she could point him out to all her little world and say, "See, he gives
me the red side of the apple!" She lifted her eyes, two bright sapphires
swimming with the diamond dew of unshed, happy tears.

"I'm a-thinkin', Father," she twittered, "that naow me an' yew be
a-gwine so fur apart, we be a-gittin' closer tergether in sperit than we
've ever been afore."

Abe bent down stiffly to brush her cheek with his rough beard, and then,
awkward, as when a boy of sixteen he had first kissed her, shy, ashamed
at this approach to a return of the old-time love-making, he seated
himself at the small, bare table.

This warped, hill-and-dale table of the drop-leaves, which had been
brought from the attic only to-day after resting there for ten years,
had served as their first dining-table when the honeymoon was young. Abe
thoughtfully drummed his hand on the board, and as Angy brought the
tea-pot and sat down opposite him, he recalled:

"We had bread an' tea an' apple-sass the day we set up housekeeping dew
yew remember, Angy?"

"An' I burned the apple-