"Know them, of course I do!" she said, enfolding the old gentleman's hand with her plump fingers. "I—I—gracious goodness, now, it really does seem as if I had seen that face somewhere!" she added, hesitating, and with her eyes fixed doubtingly on the stranger, as if she were calling up some vague remembrance, "strange, now isn't it? but he looks natural as life."
The old man turned a warming glance toward his wife, and then answered, with a grave smile, "that, at any rate, Mrs. Gray could never be a stranger to them, she who had done so much——"
She interrupted him with one of her mellow laughs. Thanks for a kind act always made the good woman feel awkward, and she blushed like a girl. "No, no; but somehow I can't give it up; this isn't the first time we have seen each other!"
"I hope that it will not be the last!" said old Mrs. Warren, coming gently forward to her husband's assistance. "Julia has seen you so often, and talked of you so much—no wonder we seem like old acquaintances. I always thought Julia looked very much like her grandfather!"
"Yes, I reckon it must be that," answered Mrs. Gray, evidently but half giving up her prepossession. "Her face isn't one to leave the mind: I dreamed about it the first night after she came into the market, poor thing—poor thing!"
Mrs. Gray repeated the last words with great tenderness, for Julia Warren had crept close to her, and taking one of her hands, softly lifted it to her lips.
"Come, come, let us go in," cried the good woman, gently withdrawing her hand, with which she patted Julia on the shoulder. "There, there, pick your grandmother a handful of China-asters. I believe the frost left them just for you."
Julia was about to obey the welcome command, but her glance happened to fall on the face of her grandfather, and she hesitated. There was something troubled in his look, an expression of anxiety that struck her as remarkable.
"Grandpa, what is the matter?—you look pale!" she said, in a low voice, for, with delicate tact, she saw he wished to escape observation.