dies were there to see, and she simply
stood, and gazed after the vehicle as it rolled away slowly behind the
jog trot of Samuel's safe, old calico-horse. She stood and looked,
holding her chin very high, and trying to check its unsteadiness.

A sense of loneliness and desolation fell over the Home. Piece by piece
the sisters put away all the clothing they had offered in vain to Abe.
They said that the house was already dull without his presence. Miss
Abigail began to plan what she should have for dinner the day of his
return.

No one seemed to notice Angy. She felt that her own departure would
create scarcely a stir; for, without Abraham, she was only one of a
group of poor, old women in a semi-charity home.

Slowly she started up the stairs for her bonnet and the old broche
shawl. When she reached the landing, where lay the knitted mat of the
three-star pattern, the matron called up to her in tragic tones:

"Angy Rose, I jest thought of it. He never kissed yew good-by!"

Angy turned, her small, slender feet sinking deep into one of the
woolly stars, her slim figure encircled by the light from the upper hall
window. She saw a dozen faces uplifted to her, and she answered with
quiet dignity:

"Abe wouldn't think of kissin' me afore folks."

Then quickly she turned again, and went to her room--their room--where
she seated herself at the window, and pressed her hand against her heart
which hurt with a new, strange, unfamiliar pain, a pain that she could
not have shown "afore folks."

XIV

CUTTING THE APRON-STRINGS

The usual hardy pleasure-seekers that gather at the foot of Shore Lane
whenever the bay becomes a field of ice and a field of sport as well
were there to see the old men arrive, and as they stepped out of the
carriage there came forward from among the group gathered about the fire
on the beach the editor of the "Shoreville Herald."

Ever since his entrance into the Old Ladies' Home, Abe had never stopped
chafing in secret over the fact that until he died, and no doubt
received a worthy obituary, he might never again "have his name in the
paper."

In former days the successive editors of the local sheet had been
willing, nay, eager, to chronicle his doings and Angy's, whether Abe's
old enemy, rheumatism, won a new victory over him or Angy's second
cousin Ruth came from Riverhead to spend the day or--wonder indeed to
relate!--the old man mended his roof or painted the front fence. No
matte