to Abraham until her head touched his
shoulder. He laid his cheek against her hair and the carefully preserved
old bonnet. Involuntarily she raised her hand, trained by the years of
pinching economy, to lift the fragile rose into a safer position. He
smiled at her action; then his arm closed about her spasmodically and he
swallowed a lump in his throat.

The afternoon was waning. Gradually over the turmoil of their hearts
stole the garden's June-time spirit of drowsy repose.

They leaned even closer to each other. The gray of the old man's hair
mingled with the gray beneath Angeline's little bonnet. Slowly his eyes
closed. Then even as Angy wondered who would watch over the slumbers of
his worn old age in the poorhouse, she, too, fell asleep.

III

THE CANDIDATE

The butcher's boy brought the tidings of the auction sale in at the
kitchen door of the Old Ladies' Home even while Angy and Abe were
lingering over their posies, and the inmates of the Home were waiting to
receive the old wife with the greater sympathy and the deeper spirit of
welcome from the fact that two of the twenty-nine members had known her
from girlhood, away back in the boarding-school days.

"Yop," said the boy, with one eye upon the stout matron, who was
critically examining the meat that he had brought. "Yop, the auction's
over, an' Cap'n Rose, he--Don't that cut suit you, Miss Abigail? You
won't find a better, nicer, tenderer, and more juicier piece of shoulder
this side of New York. Take it back, did you say? All right, ma'am, all
right!" His face assumed a look of resignation: these old ladies made
his life a martyrdom. He used to tell the "fellers" that he spent one
half his time carrying orders back and forth from the Old Ladies' Home.
But now, in spite of his meekness of manner, he did not intend to take
this cut back. So with Machiavellian skill he hastened on with his
gossip.

"Yop, an' they only riz one hundred dollars an' two cents--one hundred
dollars an' a postage-stamp. I guess it's all up with the cap'n an' the
Old Men's. I don't see 'em hangin' out no 'Welcome' sign on the strength
of that."

"You're a horrid, heartless little boy!" burst forth Miss Abigail, and,
flinging the disputed meat on the table, she sank down into the chair,
completely overcome by sorrow and indignation. "You'll be old yerself
some day," she sobbed, not noticing that he was stealthily edging toward
the door, one eye on her, one on to-morrow