Mrs. Warden flushed, smiled, and reached for her glass. The pink lemonade was almost at her lips when Livingstone’s arm shot out. Then came the tinkle of shattered glass and a crimson stain where the wine trailed across the damask.
“I beg your pardon!” exclaimed Livingstone, while the other men lowered their glasses in surprise. “That was an awkward slip of mine, Mrs. Warden. I must have hit your arm.”
“But, Bill,” muttered Harding under his breath, “you don’t mean--”
“But I do,” corrected Livingstone quietly, looking straight into Harding’s amazed eyes.
“Mr. and Mrs. Warden are my guests. They are going to drive to Bunker Hill with me by and by.”
When the six o’clock accommodation train pulled out from Boston that night it bore a little old man and a little old woman, gray-haired, weary, but blissfully content.
“We’ve seen ’em all, Hezekiah, ev’ry single one of ’em,” Abigail was saying. “An’ wan’t Mr. Livingstone good, a-gittin’ that carriage an’ takin’ us ev’rywhere; an’ it bein’ open so all ’round the sides, we didn’t miss seein’ a single thing!”
“He was, Abby, he was, an’ he wouldn’t let me pay one cent!” cried Hezekiah, taking out his roll of bills and patting it lovingly. “But, Abby, did ye notice? ‘Twas kind o’ queer we never got one taste of that pink lemonade. The waiter-man took it away.”
When Aunt Abby Waked Up
The room was very still. The gaunt figure on the bed lay motionless save for a slight lifting of the chest at long intervals. The face was turned toward the wall, leaving a trail of thin gray hair-wisps across the pillow. Just outside the door two physicians talked together in low tones, with an occasional troubled glance toward the silent figure on the bed.