had grown more gray, but no less alert, had changed in years
more than in age. And it was with a courtly bow, which also had not
varied in angle or courtliness, that little Miss Maitland saw Mr.
Augustus Lispenard bend low over Miss Wardrop's hand.

A small, slight man was Mr. Lispenard, very erect, very straight of
eyebrow, keen of glance, precise of speech. His extraordinary black
eyes peered out from beneath his level brows in a disquietingly
observant manner. One felt immediately that one's hands and feet were
peculiarly large and awkward, or one's last remark hopelessly banal, or
one's birthplace in some cheap and innominate region outside of
Manhattan. So long as Miss Wardrop remained under forty, Mr. Lispenard
had held aloof. Perhaps he feared that by calling on a maiden lady
under forty he might arouse hopes which, however chaste, could not, in
the nature of things, be fulfilled, he being what he was, a
Knickerbocker. But after this danger mark was past, and perhaps
stimulated by the removal of almost the last of the other patriarchal
residents of the Square, he called one New Year's afternoon, and
gravely presented the compliments of the season to the woman to whom he
now spoke for the first time in his life.

There was nothing vindictive about Miss Wardrop. She appreciated his
viewpoint, and bade him welcome as naturally as though they had been
friends for years. And thereafter Mr. Lispenard was an irregular but
always gladly received caller in the parlor separated from his own by
little more than twelve inches of brick and mortar.

In the days when Miss Mary was growing up to childhood, Mr. Lispenard
had been one of those who had marched down Broadway in 1861, not to
return for four long years. South of the Potomac he had acquired many
vivid and remarkable experiences of which no one had ever heard him
speak, and also a pension, incredibly small, which he received in
silent dignity each month and equally without comment turned over to a
rascally body servant who had run away from more battles than one would
have conceived to be possible. This sturdy retainer, having served a
short time in Mr. Lispenard's troop and performed him some trifling
services, had ten years after the war turned up with a calm and most
surprising assumption of his old commander's responsibility for his
entire existence, and since that time had lived on his ex-lieutenant's
bounty.

One of the chief attractions, in Helen's