The old man was particularly devoted to little Alice.
"She's like a water-sprite," he said,—"so fine and delicate."
"She's different from Ernie's," answered Ruth simply. "I reck'n it was the suffering when I was carrying her."
"She's a Botticelli," mused the old man. "The others are Michael Angelos."
Ruth had no notion what he meant—that often happened; but she knew he meant something kind.
"I'd ha said Sue was more the bottled cherry kind, myself," she answered gently.
Her visitor came regularly every Tuesday morning on the way to the Quaker meeting-house, shuffling down Borough Lane past the Star, his coat-tails floating behind him, his gold spectacles on his nose, with something of the absorbed and humming laziness of a great bee. Ruth would hear the familiar knock at the door and open. The old man would sit in the kitchen for an hour by the latest baby's cot, saying nothing, the child playing with his little finger or listening to the ticking of the gold watch held to its ear.
After he was gone Ruth would always find a new shilling on the dresser. When she first told Ernie about the shilling, he was surly and ashamed.
"It's his tobacco money," he said gruffly. "You mustn't keep it."
Next Tuesday she dutifully handed the coin back to the giver,