example," she said, putting her arm about his neck as they rocked
gently together, and rubbing her cheek against his. "Don't you see? It's
quite, _quite_ different with us. Why _your_ being _my_ elder, by so
many years, only makes me look up to you...."

"'Look up to me!'" echoed he, with a burst of Homeric mirth. Charlotte
clapped her hand over his mouth. "Sssh!" she warned. "They'll hear you.
They'll think we're laughing at them."

"Poor things," said he, sobered. "It seems mighty sad to think of two
lovers being afraid of being laughed at."

"It _is_ sad," said Charlotte. "You think I'm cross about it, Joe, but I
could cry about it this minute."

She dropped her head on his shoulder, and her other arm went round his
neck.

"Don't," said the Judge softly. "Don't you cry, honey, whatever you do."

Charlotte from her refuge in his strong neck spoke passionately. Her
warm breath tickled him almost beyond endurance, but he held her and
suffered in silence with the true martyr spirit of the husband who is
born and not made.

"Oh, Joe," she murmured vehemently; "you're not a woman, so you can't
see it all as I see it. _Now_, perhaps, it's all right, but in a few
years ... just a few years.... Oh, my poor Sophy! The grey hairs ...
will come ... then wrinkles.... Little by little, little by little,
there, under his eyes--his hateful _young_ eyes--she will grow old. She
will look like his mother when she's fifty and he's only forty-five!"

"No, no, lady-bird, really you exaggerate!" slipped in the Judge.

"This _can't_ be exaggerated!" said Charlotte. "It _can't_ be----
_Shakespeare_ couldn't exaggerate it!"

"He's got a right smart gift that way, honey," slipped in the Judge
again.

Charlotte didn't hear him. She sat up, much to his relief, and putting
her hands on his shoulders looked at him solemnly.

"Joe," she said, "you're a man, so you don't know about one of the worst
tragedies in a woman's life--the tragedy of the hand-glass!"

"The _what_?" asked her husband.

"The hand-glass, Joe. That little innocent looking bit of silver-framed
glass that you _think_ I only use to do my hair with. Oh, some great
poet ought to write an ode to a woman with her hand-glass! Talk of
'Familiars,' of 'Devils'--there's no Imp out of Hell...."

"Charlotte!" cried her astounded husband.

"I said out--of--_Hell_," repeated she firmly--"there's no Imp so
cunning, so malicious, so brutal as a woman's hand-glass. First, like