er after could the little dressmaker understand how she had brought
herself to do this thing. One moment she had been sitting quietly on her
side of the partition, stirring her cup of tea with one of her Gorham
spoons. She was quiet, she was peaceful. The evening was closing
down tranquilly. Her room was the picture of calmness and order. The
geraniums blooming in the starch boxes in the window, the aged goldfish
occasionally turning his iridescent flank to catch a sudden glow of the
setting sun. The next moment she had been all trepidation. It seemed to
her the most natural thing in the world to make a steaming cup of tea
and carry it in to Old Grannis next door. It seemed to her that he was
wanting her, that she ought to go to him. With the brusque resolve and
intrepidity that sometimes seizes upon very timid people--the courage of
the coward greater than all others--she had presented herself at the old
Englishman's half-open door, and, when he had not heeded her knock,
had pushed it open, and at last, after all these years, stood upon
the threshold of his room. She had found courage enough to explain her
intrusion.

"I was making some tea, and I thought you would like to have a cup."

Old Grannis dropped his hands upon either arm of his chair, and, leaning
forward a little, looked at her blankly. He did not speak.

The retired dressmaker's courage had carried her thus far; now it
deserted her as abruptly as it had come. Her cheeks became scarlet; her
funny little false curls trembled with her agitation. What she had done
seemed to her indecorous beyond expression. It was an enormity. Fancy,
she had gone into his room, INTO HIS ROOM--Mister Grannis's room. She
had done this--she who could not pass him on the stairs without a qualm.
What to do she did not know. She stood, a fixture, on the threshold of
his room, without even resolution enough to beat a retreat. Helplessly,
and with a little quaver in her voice, she repeated obstinately:

"I was making some tea, and I thought you would like to have a cup of
tea." Her agitation betrayed itself in the repetition of the word. She
felt that she could not hold the tray out another instant. Already she
was trembling so that half the tea was spilled.

Old Grannis still kept silence, still bending forward, with wide eyes,
his hands gripping the arms of his chair.

Then with the tea-tray still held straight before her, the little
dressmaker exclaimed tearfully:

"Oh, I di