ged before your eyes"--

"JAMES!" cried Mrs. Bowdoin. But the old lady was equal to the
occasion; she rose (--"and no one there to cut him down!" interpolated
the old gentleman feebly) and went to the door.

The two men got up and ran to the window. There was something of a
crowd around the old elm-tree; and, pressing their noses against the
pane, they could see the old lady crossing the street.

"I think, sir," said Mr. Harley to his grandfather, "it's about time
to get down town." And they took their straw hats and sallied forth.
But as they walked down the shady side of the street, old Mr.
Bowdoin's progress became subject to impediments of laughter, which
were less successfully suppressed as they got farther away, and in
which the young man finally joined. "Though it's really too bad," he
added, by way of protest, now laughing harder than his grandfather.

"I'm going to get her that carriage to-day," said the elder
deprecatingly. Then, as if to change the subject, "Did you see old
Jamie after he left, yesterday?"

"I think I caught him in a florist's, buying flowers," answered
Harley.

"Buying flowers!" The old gentleman burst into such a roar that the
passers in the crowded street stopped there to look at him, and went
down town the merrier for it. "At a florist's! But what were you
doing?" he closed, with sudden gravity.

"All right, governor, quite all right. I was buying them for grandma's
birthday. _That_'s all over. Though I'm sorry for her, just the same.
How does the man live, now?"

"Jamie says he's doing well," answered the other hurriedly. "By the
way, stop at the bank and tell them to give old Jamie a holiday
to-day. He'd never take it of himself."

"Aren't you coming down?" Harley spoke as he turned in by Court
Square,--a poor neighborhood then, and surrounded by the police
lodging-houses and doubtful hotels.

"Not that way," said Mr. Bowdoin. "I hate to see the faces one meets
about there, poor things. Hope the flowers will get up to your
grandmother, Harley; she'll need 'em!" And the old man went off with a
final chuckle. "Hanging on a tree! Well, 'twould be a good thing for
the country if he were." Of such mental inconsistencies were
benevolent old gentlemen then capable.

But when Harley reached the bank, though it was late, Jamie had not
yet arrived. Harley thought he knew the reason of this; but when old
Mr. Bowdoin came, at noon, the clerk was still away; and the old
gentleman, who