g an impulse that had
been familiar to him in all unusual moods his life long, he left the
house after tea and turned his steps down the street. As he stopped at
Miss Rood's gate, Lucy, Mabel and George Hammond were under the apple
trees in the garden opposite.

"Look, Mabel! There's Mr. Morgan going to call on Miss Rood," said Lucy
softly.

"Oh, do look, George!" said Mabel eagerly. "That old gentleman has been
paying court to an old maid over in that little house for forty years.
And to think," she added in a lower tone, intended for his private ear,
"what a fuss you make about waiting six months!"

"Humph! You please to forget that it's easier to wait for some things
than for others. Six months of my kind of waiting, I take it, require
more patience than forty years of his--or any other man's," he added
with increased emphasis.

"Be quiet, sir!" replied Mabel, answering his look of unruly admiration
with one of half pique. "I'm not a sugar-plum, that's not enjoyed till
it's in the mouth. If you haven't got me now, you'll never have me. If
being engaged isn't enough, you don't deserve to be married." And then,
seeing the blank expression with which he looked down at her, she added
with a prescient resignedness, "I'm afraid, dear, you'll be so
disappointed when we're married if you find this so tedious."

Lucy had discreetly wandered away, and of how they made it up there were
no witnesses. But it seems likely that they did so, for shortly after
they wandered away together down the darkening street.

Like most of the Plainfield houses, that at which Mr. Morgan turned in
stood well back from the street. At a side window, still further
sheltered from view by a syringa-bush at the house corner, sat a little
woman with a small pale face, the still attractive features perceptibly
sharpened by years, of which the half-gray hair bore further testimony.
The eyes, just now fixed absently upon the dusking landscape, were light
gray and a little faded, while around the lips there were crowsfeet,
especially when they were pressed together, as now, in an unsatisfied,
almost pathetic look, evidently habitual to her face when in repose.
There was withal something in her features that so reminded you of Mr.
Morgan that any one conversant with the facts of his life-romance would
have at once inferred--though by just what logic he might not be able to
explain--that this must be Miss Rood. It is well known that long-wedded
couples