hoped, going to like his new neighbor as
much as all the rest of it. He gave her a propitiatory smile, hoping she
might like him a little, too, and hoping also that she would not mind
Vincent. Sometimes people did, especially nice ladies such as evidently
Mrs. Crittenden was. He observed that as usual Vincent had cut in ahead
of everybody else, had mentioned their names, both of them, and was
talking with that . . . well, the way he _did_, which people either liked
very much or couldn't abide. He looked at Vincent as he talked. He was
not a great talker himself, which gave him a great deal of practice in
watching people who did. He often felt that he _saw_ more than he heard,
so much more did people's faces express than their words.

He noticed that the younger man was smiling a good deal, showing those
fine teeth of his, and he had one of those instantaneously-gone,
flash-light reminiscences of elderly people, . . . the day when Mr. Marsh
had been called away from the office and had asked him to go with little
Vincent to keep an appointment with the dentist. Heavens! How the kid
had roared and kicked! And now he sat there, smiling, "making a call,"
probably with that very filling in his tooth, grown-up, not even so very
young any more, with a little gray in his thick hair, what people often
called a good-looking man. How life did run between your fingers! Well,
he would close his hand tight upon what was left to him. He noticed
further that as Vincent talked, his eyes fixed on his interlocutor, his
vigorous hands caressed with a slow circular motion the rounded arms of
his chair. "What a three-ringed circus that fellow is," he thought. "I
bet that the lady thinks he hasn't another idea in his head but
introducing an old friend, and all the time he's taking her in, every
inch of her, and three to one, what he'll talk about most afterwards is
the smooth hard feeling of those polished arm-chairs." Vincent was
saying, ". . . and so, we heard in a round-about way too long to bother
you with, about the small old house next door being for sale, and how
very quiet and peaceful a spot this is, and the Company bought it for
Mr. Welles for a permanent home, now he has retired."

"Pretty fine of them!" murmured the older man dutifully, to the lady.

Vincent went on, "Oh, it's only the smallest way for them to show their
sense of his life-time devotion to their interests. There's no
estimating what we all owe him, for his steadin