, glancing
towards the sleeper, he added, with a chuckle, "an' ef they'd 'a'
prophesied it I wouldn't 'a' believed sech ez _thet_, neither--at
my time o' life--bless her little curly head."

He sat down on the floor beside the bundle, clipped the twine, and
cautiously pushed back the wrappings. Then, rising, he carefully set
each piece of the water-set up above the stocking on the mantel. He did
not stop to examine it. He was anxious to get it in place without noise.

It made a fine show, even in the dim, unsteady light of the single taper
that burned in its tumbler of oil close beside the bed. Indeed, when it
arose in all its splendor, he was very much impressed.

"A thing like that ought to have a chandelier to set it off right," he
thought--"yas, and she'll have one, too--she'll have anything she
wants--thet I can give her."

Sleep came slowly to the old man that night, and even long after his
eyes were closed, the silver things seemed arrayed in line upon his
mental retina. And when, after a long while, he fell into a troubled
slumber, it was only to dream. And in his dream old Judge Robinson's
mother-in-law seemed to come and stand before him--black dress, side
curls, and all--and when he looked at her for the first time in his life
unabashed--she began to bow, over and over again, and to say with each
salutation, "Be seated"--"be seated"--"be seated," getting farther and
farther away with each bow until she was a mere speck in the
distance--and then the speck became a spot of white, and he saw that the
old lady had taken on a spout and a handle, and that she was only an
ice-pitcher, tilting, and tilting, and tilting--while from the yellow
spout came a fine metallic voice saying, "Be seated"--"be seated"--again
and again. Then there would be a change. Two ladies would appear
approaching each other and retreating--turning into two ice-pitchers,
tilting to each other, then passing from tilting pitchers to bowing
ladies, until sometimes there seemed almost to be a pitcher and a lady
in view at the same time. When he began to look for them both at once
the dream became tantalizing. Twin ladies and twin pitchers--but never
quite clearly a lady and a pitcher. Even while the vision tormented him
it held him fast--perhaps because he was tired, having lost his first
hours of sleep.

He was still sleeping soundly, spite of the dissolving views of the
novel panorama, when above the two voices that kept inviting him to "b