"What's your business?" persisted Mrs. Putnam.
"I am a lawyer," replied Quincy.
Mrs. Putnam looked at him inquiringly and said, "Be n't you rather young for a lawyer? How old be you, anyway?"
Quincy decided to take a good humored part in his cross examination and said without a smile, "I am twenty-three years, two months, sixteen days old."
"Be you?" exclaimed Mrs. Putnam. "I shouldn't have said you were a day over nineteen."
Quincy never felt his youth so keenly before. He determined to change the conversation.
"Did you attend the concert, Mrs. Putnam?"
"No," said she. "Pa and me don't go out much; he's deefer'n a stone post and I've had the rheumatiz so bad in my knees for the last five years that I can't walk without crutches;" and she pointed to a pair that lay on the floor beside her chair.
During this conversation old Mr. Putnam had been eying Quincy very keenly. He blurted out, "He's a chip of the old block, Heppy; he looks just as Jim did when he fust came to this town. Did yer say yer had an Uncle Jim?"