Old Lady Number 31 | Page 4

softly into the stripped, bare, and
lonely room. Angy felt strangely encouraged and comforted. The roses
became symbolical to her of the "lilies of the field which toil not,
neither do they spin"; the robin was one of the "two sparrows sold for a
farthing, and one of them shall not fall to the ground without your
Father"; while the sunlight seemed to call out to the little old lady who
hoped and believed and loved much: "Fear ye not therefor. Ye are of
more value than many sparrows!"

II
"GOOD-BY"
When the last look of parting had been given to the old kitchen and the
couple passed out-of-doors, hushed and trembling, they presented an
incongruously brave, gala-day appearance. Both were dressed in their
best. To be sure, Abraham's Sunday suit had long since become his
only, every-day suit as well, but he wore his Sabbath-day hat, a beaver
of ancient design, with an air that cast its reflection over all his apparel.
Angeline had on a black silk gown as shiny as the freshly polished
stove she was leaving in her kitchen--a gown which testified from its
voluminous hem to the soft yellow net at the throat that Angeline was
as neat a mender and darner as could be found in Suffolk county.
A black silk bonnet snuggled close to her head, from under its brim
peeping a single pink rose. Every spring for ten years Angeline had
renewed the youth of this rose by treating its petals with the tender red
dye of a budding oak.
Under the pink rose, a soft pink flush bloomed on either of the old
lady's cheeks. Her eyes flashed with unconquerable pride, and her
square, firm chin she held very high; for now, indeed, she was filled

with terror of what "folks would say" to this home-leaving, and it was a
bright June afternoon, too clear for an umbrella with which to hide
one's face from prying neighbors, too late in the day for a sunshade.
Angy tucked the green-black affair which served them as both under
her arm and swung Abe's figured old carpet-bag in her hand with the
manner of one setting out on a pleasant journey. Abe, though resting
heavily on his stout, crooked cane, dragged behind him Angy's little
horsehair trunk upon a creaking, old, unusually large, toy
express-wagon which he had bought at some forgotten auction long
ago.
The husband and wife passed into the garden between borders of
boxwood, beyond which nodded the heads of Angy's carefully tended,
out-door "children"--her roses, her snowballs, her sweet-smelling
syringas, her wax-like bleeding-hearts, and her shrub of bridal-wreath.
"Jest a minute," she murmured, as Abe would have hastened on to the
gate. She bent her proud head and kissed with furtive, half-ashamed
passion a fluffy white spray of the bridal-wreath. Now overtopping the
husband's silk hat, the shrub had not come so high as his knee when
they two had planted it nearly a half-century ago.
"You're mine!" Angy's heart cried out to the shrub and to every
growing thing in the garden. "You're mine. I planted you, tended you,
loved you into growing. You're all the children I ever had, and I'm
leaving you."
But the old wife did not pluck a single flower, for she could never bear
to see a blossom wither in her hand, while all she said aloud was: "I'm
glad 't was Mis' Holmes that bought in the house. They say she's a great
hand ter dig in the garden."
Angy's voice faltered. Abe did not answer. Something had caused a
swimming before his eyes which he did not wish his wife to see; so he
let fall the handle of the express-wagon and, bending his slow back,
plucked a sprig of "old-man." Though he could not have expressed his
sentiments in words, the garden brought poignant recollections of the

hopes and promises which had thrown their rose color about the young
days of his marriage. His hopes had never blossomed into fulfilment.
His promises to the little wife had been choked by the weeds of his own
inefficiency. Worse than this, the bursting into bloom of seeds of
selfish recklessness in himself was what had turned the garden of their
life into an arid waste. And now, in their dry and withered old age, he
and Angy were being torn up by the roots, flung as so much rubbish by
the roadside.
"Mother, I be dretful sorry ter take yew away from your posies,"
muttered Abraham as he arose with his green sprig in his hand.
With shaking fingers, Angy sought a pin hidden beneath her basque.
"Father, shall I pin yer 'old-man' in yer buttonhole?" she quavered.
Then as he stooped for her to arrange the posy, she whispered: "I
wouldn't care, 'cept