He stooped to kiss the withered brown cheek; the old woman caught up her apron to her face.
"It's him! it's him! it's one of my little boys, but where's the other? Oh, Mis' Tree, I can't stand it! I can't stand it!"
Mrs. Tree watched her, dry-eyed.
"Cry away, so long as you don't cry into the gruel," she said, kindly. "You are an old goose, Direxia Hawkes. I haven't been able to cry for ten years, Willy. Here! take the 'postle spoon and stir it. Has she brought a cup for you?"
"Well, I should hope I had!" said Direxia, drying her eyes. "I ain't quite lost my wits, Mis' Tree."
"You never had enough to lose!" retorted her mistress. "Hark! there's Jocko wanting his gruel. Bring him in; and mind you take a sup yourself before you go to bed, Direxia! You're all shaken up."
"Gadzooks!" said the parrot. "The cup that cheers! Go to bed, Direxia! Direxia Hawkes, wife of Guy Fawkes!"
"Now look at that!" said Direxia. "Ain't you ashamed, Willy Jaquith? He ain't said that since you went away."
The next morning was bright and clear. Mrs. Malvina Weight, sweeping her front chamber, with an anxious eye on the house opposite, saw the door open and Mrs. Tree come out, followed by a tall young man. The old lady wore the huge black velvet bonnet, surmounted by a bird of paradise, which she had brought from Paris forty years before, and an India shawl which had pointed a moral to the pious of Elmerton for more than that length of time. "Adorning her perishing back with what would put food in the mouth of twenty Christian heathens for a year!" was the way Mrs. Weight herself expressed it.