"James, I should think, at your time of life, you'd stop rambling over the Common before breakfast,—in carpet slippers, too,—when you know I've been up so late the night before at a meeting in behalf of"—
A sudden twinkle flashed over the old gentleman's rosy face; then he became solemn, preternaturally solemn. Harley caught the expression and listened intently. Mrs. Bowdoin, pouring out cream as if it were coals of fire on his head, was not looking at him.
"There!" gasped old Mr. Bowdoin, dropping heavily into a chair. "Always said it would happen. I feel faint!"
"James?" said Mrs. Bowdoin.
"Always said it would happen—and there's your cousin, Wendell Phillips, out on the Common, hanging stark on the limb of an elm-tree."
"James!"
"Always said it would come to this. Perhaps you'd go out in carpet slippers if you saw your wife's cousin hanged before your eyes"—
"James!" cried Mrs. Bowdoin. But the old lady was equal to the occasion; she rose (—"and no one there to cut him down!" interpolated the old gentleman feebly) and went to the door.
The two men got up and ran to the window. There was something of a crowd around the old elm-tree; and, pressing their noses against the pane, they could see the old lady crossing the street.
"I think, sir," said Mr. Harley to his grandfather, "it's about time to get down town." And they took their straw hats and sallied forth. But as they walked down the shady side of the street, old Mr. Bowdoin's progress became subject to impediments of laughter, which were less successfully suppressed as they got farther away, and in which the young man finally joined. "Though it's really too bad," he added, by way of protest, now laughing harder than his grandfather.