“And my father was tall and straight of limb, too,” wailed Mrs. Buck. “It seems worse because old Billy’s legs are so short and crooked.”
Crooked they may have been, but short they were not. By the time the broadcloth trousers traveled the circuitous route of the old man’s legs everything came out even.
“Fit me like they was made fer me,” he exclaimed, showing himself to Judith.
“Perhaps they were,” mused Judith. “And now the coat!”
It was a rusty coat, long of tail and known at the time of its pristine glory as a “Prince Albert.” Ezra Knight had kept it for funerals and other ceremonious occasions.
“Is there ary hat?”
There was—a high silk hat with a broad brim. Mrs. Buck rather thought it was one 233 that had belonged to her grandfather and not her father. At any rate, it rested comfortably on Billy’s cotton white wool.
“Now, Uncle Billy, trim your beard and nobody will know you,” suggested Judith. So trim his beard he did, much to the improvement of his appearance.
“Reform number one!” said Judith to herself.
Miss Ann slept the sleep of industry that first night at the Bucks’, and the sun was high when she opened her tired old eyes. She lay still for a moment, wondering where she was. This room was different from any of the other guest chambers she had occupied. There was a kind of austerity in the quaint old furniture that was lacking in the bedrooms where modern taste held sway. Nothing had been taken from or added to the Bucks’ guest chamber since Grandmother Knight had reverently placed there her best highboy and her finest mahogany bed and candle stand. On the mantel was the model of a ship that tradition said the Norse sailor had carved, and on the walls steel engravings of Milton and Newton—Milton looking up at the stars seeking the proper rhymes, and Newton with eyes cast down searching out the power of gravity from the ground. 234