d whose hair he pulled.
To think of his smacking that dear girl that played the piano so nicely
all day! And pulling her back-tails so she called out when she was
actually succouring his lacerated face. I gathered that her name may
have been Matilda, and that she wore plaits.

"'I think her such a nice, dear girl,' said old Mrs. Picture--I like
that name for her--'because she plays the piano all day long, and I sit
here and listen, and think of old times.' I asked a question. 'Why, no,
my dear!--I can't say she knows any tunes. But she plays her scales all
day, very nicely, and makes me think of when my sister and I played
scales--oh, so many years ago! But we played tunes too. I sometimes
think I could teach her "The Harmonious Blacksmith," if only we was a
bit nearer.' I could see in her old face that she was back in the Past,
listening to a memory. How I wished I had a piano to play 'The
Harmonious Blacksmith' for her again!

"I got her somehow to talk of herself and her antecedents, but rather
stingily. She married young and went abroad, but she seemed not to want
to talk about this. I could not press her. She had come back home--from
wherever she was--many years after her husband's death, with an only
son, the survivor of a family of four children. He was a man, not a boy;
at least, he married a year or so after. She 'could not say that he was
dead.' Otherwise, she knew of no living relative. Her means of
livelihood was an annuity 'bought by my poor son before....'--before
something she either forgot to tell, or fought shy of--the last, I
think. 'I'm very happy up here,' she said. 'Only I might not be, if I
was one of those that wanted gaiety. Mrs. Burr she lives with me, and it
costs her no rent, and she sees to me. And my children--I call 'em
mine--come for company, 'most every day. Don't you, Dave?'

"Dave tore himself away from the pleasing spectacle of his enemy in
hospital, and came to confirm this. 'Yorce!' said he, with emphasis. 'Me
and Dolly!' He recited rapidly all the days of the week, an appointment
being imputed to each. But he weakened the force of his rhetoric by
adding:--'Only not some of 'em always!' Mrs. Picture then said:--'But
you love your old granny in the country better than you do me, don't
you, Davy dear?' Whereupon Dave shouted with all his voice:--'I
_doesn't_!' and flushed quite red, indignantly.

"The old lady then said, most unfairly:--'Then which do you love best,
dear child? Bec