Old Lady Number 31 | Page 6

she must--simply must--stop that "all-of-a-tremble" feeling which was going on inside of her. She stepped from the gate to the bench blindly, with Abe's hand on her arm, though, still blindly, with exaggerated care she placed his carpet-bag on the grass beside her.
He laid down his cane, took off his high hat and wiped his brow. He looked at her anxiously. Still she could not lift her blurred eyes, nor could she check her trembling.
Seeing how she shook, he passed his arm around her shoulder. He murmured something--what, neither he nor she knew--but the love of his youth spoke in the murmur, and again fell the silence.
Angy's eyes cleared. She struggled to speak, aghast at the thought that life itself might be done before ever they could have one hour together again; but no words came. So much--so much to say! She reached out her hand to where his rested upon his knee. Their fingers gripped, and each felt a sense of dreary cheer to know that the touch was speaking what the tongue could not utter.
Time passed swiftly. The silent hour sped on. The young blades of corn gossiped gently along the field. Above, the branches of the willow swished and swayed to the rhythm of the soft, south wind.
"How still, how still it is!" whispered the breeze.
"Rest, rest, rest!" was the lullaby swish of the willow.
The old wife nestled closer 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's pot-roast. "I tell yew, Tommy," regaining her accustomed confiding amiability, as she lifted the corner of her apron to wipe her eyes, "Miss Ellie will feel some kind o' bad, tew. Yer know me an' her an' Angy all went ter school tergether, although Miss Ellie is so much younger 'n the rest o' us that we call her the baby. Here! Where--"
But he was gone. Sighing heavily, the matron put the meat in the ice-box, and then made her slow, lumbering way into the front hall, or community-room, where the sisters were gathered in a body to await the new arrival.
"Waal, say!" she supplemented, after she had finished telling her pitiably brief story, "thar's trouble ernough ter go 'round, hain't thar?"
Aunt Nancy Smith, who never believed in wearing her heart on her sleeve, sniffed and thumped her cane on the floor.
"Yew young