And I hope that you and I have “seen things” in the mirror, though perhaps we are not eighty-four and have no Emmy.
Then he went on getting ready for her till he was very tired—more tired, he thought, than he had ever been.
Outside Mrs. Schwalm was whispering to Mrs. Krantz:
“No, they ain’t far apart! He’s mighty funny to-night. He is seeing things.”
At last he was ready to hang up their stockings on the brass nails which had been put into the mantel for this purpose when the house was built.
And, for something to surprise her, he took from behind that loose brick a gold coin. It had the date of 1825 on it. There was a hole in it, and through the hole a narrow blue ribbon.
But now he stopped and his heart heaved.
“It was to cut the baby’s teeth on.”
After a while:
“We was going to call him Billy if he was a boy—Emmy if she was a girl.”