Time passed swiftly. The silent hour sped on. The young blades of corn gossiped gently along the field. Above, the branches of the willow swished and swayed to the rhythm of the soft, south wind.
"How still, how still it is!" whispered the breeze.
"Rest, rest, rest!" was the lullaby swish of the willow.
The old wife nestled closer to Abraham until her head touched his shoulder. He laid his cheek against her hair and the carefully preserved old bonnet. Involuntarily she raised her hand, trained by the years of pinching economy, to lift the fragile rose into a safer position. He smiled at her action; then his arm closed about her spasmodically and he swallowed a lump in his throat.
The afternoon was waning. Gradually over the turmoil of their hearts stole the garden's June-time spirit of drowsy repose.
They leaned even closer to each other. The gray of the old man's hair mingled with the gray beneath Angeline's little bonnet. Slowly his eyes closed. Then even as Angy wondered who would watch over the slumbers of his worn old age in the poorhouse, she, too, fell asleep.
III
THE CANDIDATE
The butcher's boy brought the tidings of the auction sale in at the kitchen door of the Old Ladies' Home even while Angy and Abe were lingering over their posies, and the inmates of the Home were waiting to receive the old wife with the greater sympathy and the deeper spirit of welcome from the fact that two of the twenty-nine members had known her from girlhood, away back in the boarding-school days.
"Yop," said the boy, with one eye upon the stout matron, who was critically examining the meat that he had brought. "Yop, the auction's over, an' Cap'n Rose, he—Don't that cut suit you, Miss Abigail? You won't find a better, nicer, tenderer, and more juicier piece of shoulder this side of New York. Take it back, did you say? All right, ma'am, all right!" His face assumed a look of resignation: these old ladies made his life a martyrdom. He used to tell the "fellers" that he spent one half his time carrying orders back and forth from the Old Ladies' Home. But now, in spite of his meekness of manner, he did not intend to take this cut back. So with Machiavellian skill he hastened on with his gossip.