er were for ever twitching at their
corners.

"Mother is very old," said my hostess.

"Awfully old," said my male friend, whose name proved to be Richard
Wholesome.

"Thee might think it sad to see one whose whole language has come to be
just these words, but sometimes she will be glad and say, 'Has thee a
four-leaved clover?' and sometimes she will be ready to cry, and will
say only the same words. But if thee were to say, 'Have a cup of
coffee?' she would but answer, 'Has thee a four-leaved clover?' Does it
not seem strange to thee, and sad? We are used to it, as it might
be--quite used to it. And that above her is her picture as a girl."

"Saves her a deal of talking," said Mr. Wholesome, "and thinking. Any
words would serve her as well. Might have said, 'Topsail halyards,' all
the same."

"Richard!" said Mistress White. Mistress Priscilla White was her name.

"Perchance thee would pardon me," said Mr. Wholesome.

"I wonder," said a third voice in the window, "does the nice old dame
know what color has the clover? and does she remember fields of
clover--pink among the green?"

"Has thee a four-leaved clover?" re-echoed the voice feebly from between
the windows.

The man who was curious as to the dame's remembrances was a small stout
person whose arms and legs did not seem to belong to him, and whose face
was strangely gnarled, like the odd face a boy might carve on a
hickory-nut, but withal a visage pleasant and ruddy.

"That," said Mistress White as he moved away, "is Mr. Schmidt--an old
boarder with some odd ways of his own which we mostly forgive. A good
man if it were not for his pipe," she added demurely--"altogether a good
man."

"With or without his pipe," said Mr. Wholesome.

"Richard!" returned our hostess, with a half smile.

"Without his pipe," he added; and the unseen demons twitched at the
corners of his mouth anew.

Altogether, these seemed to me droll people, they said so little, and,
saving the small German, were so serenely grave. I suppose that first
evening must have made a deep mark on my memory, for to this day I
recall it with the clearness of a picture still before my eyes. Between
the windows sat the old dame with hands quiet on her lap now that the
twilight had grown deeper--a silent, gray Quaker sphinx, with one only
remembrance out of all her seventy years of life. In the open window sat
as in a frame the daughter, a woman of some twenty-five years, rosy yet
as only a Qua