ated Mexican gold-mine, the melodeon dropped one of its keys, but the
roses nodded on with the same old sunny hope; when Abe had to take the
second mortgage and Tenafly Gold became a forbidden topic of
conversation, the minute-hand fell off the parlor clock, but the flowers
on the back of the old chair blossomed on none the less serenely.

The soil grew more and more barren as the years went by; but still the
roses had kept fresh and young, so why, argued Angy, should not she? If
old age and the pinch of poverty had failed to conquer their valiant
spirit, why should she listen to the croaking tale? If they bloomed on
with the same crimson flaunt of color, though the rockers beneath them
had grown warped and the body of the chair creaked and groaned every
time one ventured to sit in it, why should she not ignore the stiffness
which the years seemed to bring to her joints, the complaints which her
body threatened every now and again to utter, and fare on herself, a
hardy perennial bravely facing life's winter-time?

Even this dreaded day had not taken one fraction of a shade from the
glory of the roses, as Angeline could see in the bud at one side of
Abraham's head and the full-blown flower below his right ear; so why
should she droop because the sale of her household goods had been
somewhat disappointing? _Somewhat?_ When the childless old couple, still
sailing under the banner of a charity-forbidding pride, became
practically reduced to their last copper, just as Abe's joints were
"loosenin' up" after a five years' siege of rheumatism, and decided to
sell all their worldly possessions, apart from their patched and
threadbare wardrobes and a few meager keepsakes, they had depended upon
raising at least two hundred dollars, one half of which was to secure
Abe a berth in the Old Men's Home at Indian Village, and the other half
to make Angeline comfortable for life, if a little lonely, in the Old
Ladies' Home in their own native hamlet of Shoreville. Both institutions
had been generously endowed by the same estate, and were separated by a
distance of but five miles.

"Might as waal be five hunderd, with my rheumatiz an' yer weak heart,"
Abraham had growled when Angy first proposed the plan as the only
dignified solution to their problem of living.

"But," the little wife had rejoined, "it'll be a mite o' comfort
a-knowin' a body's so near, even ef yer can't git tew 'em."

Now, another solution must be found to the probl