return to her
bedroom or to force herself to go on to the market, those hated familiar
objects flashed in a blaze of light through her mind, and, opening the
gate, she passed out on the sidewalk, and started at a rapid step down
the deserted pavement of Sycamore Street. "At least nobody will speak to
me," she thought; but while the words were still on her lips, she saw a
door in the block open wide, and one of her neighbours come out on his
way to his business. Turning hastily, she fled into a cross street, and
then gathering courage, went on, trembling in every limb, towards the
old market, which she used because her mother and her grandmother had
used it before her.

The fish-carts were still there just as they had been when she was a
girl, but the army of black-robed housekeepers had changed or melted
away. Here, also, the physical details of life had survived the beings
for whose use or comfort they had come into existence. The meat and the
vegetable stalls were standing in orderly rows about the octagonal
building; wilted cabbage leaves littered the dusty floor; flies swarmed
around the bleeding forms hanging from hooks in the sunshine; even Mr.
Dewlap, hale and red-cheeked, offered her white pullets out of the
wooden coop at his feet. So little had the physical scene changed since
the morning, more than twenty-five years ago, of her meeting with
Oliver, that while she paused there beside Mr. Dewlap's stall, one of
the older generation might have mistaken her for her mother.

"My dear Virginia," said a voice at her back, and, turning, she found
Mrs. Peachey, a trifle rheumatic, but still plump and pretty. "I'm so
glad you come to the old market, my child. I suppose you cling to it
because of your mother, and then things are really so much dearer
uptown, don't you think so?"

"Yes, I dare say they are, but I've got into the habit of coming here."

"One does get into habits. Now I've bought chickens from Mr. Dewlap for
forty years. I remember your mother and I used to say that there were no
chickens to compare with his white pullets."

"I remember. Mother was a wonderful housekeeper."

"And you are too, my dear. Everybody says that you have the best table
in Dinwiddie!" Her small rosy face, framed in the shirred brim of her
black silk bonnet, was wrinkled with age, but even her wrinkles were
cheerful ones, and detracted nothing from the charming archness of her
expression. Unconquerable still, she went her spri