The quarter-moon was coming up when Priscilla Perkins opened the closet door for her things.
"I'll walk over with Aunt Priscilla," said Warren. "It's my night for practice."
"Oh, yes." His father nodded. Warren had lately joined the band, but his mother thought she couldn't stand the cornet round the house.
"I aint a mite afraid in the moonlight. I come so often I ought not put anyone out."
"Now that the evenings are cool it seems lonesomer," said Mr. Leverett, settling in his armchair by the fire, really glad his son could be attentive without any special sacrifice.
Doris brought the queer little stool and sat down beside him. She looked as if she had always lived there.
"You'll all spoil that child," Aunt Priscilla said to Warren when they had stepped off the stoop.
"I don't believe there's any spoil to her," said Warren heartily. "She's the sweetest little thing I ever saw; so wise in some ways and so honestly ignorant in others. I never saw Uncle Win so taken—he never seems to quite know what to do with children. And he's asked us all over to tea some night next week. I was clear struck."
Mrs. Perkins made no reply. About once a year he invited her over to tea with some of the old cousins, and he called on her New Year's Day, which was not specially kept in any fashionable way.
Mrs. Perkins always said King Street, though in a burst of patriotism the name had been changed after the Revolution. It had dropped down very much and was being given over to business. There was a narrow hall floor set in a little distance, with a few steps, and the shop front with the plain sign of "Jonas Field, Flour, Grain, and Feed." The stairway led to an upper hall and a very comfortable suite of rooms, where Mrs. Perkins had come as a young wife, and where she meant to end her days. It was plenty good enough inside, and she "didn't live in the street."