"Can't say, Marthy, you women can judge better of that. I only know she acts uncommonly unhappy lately. Let's see, the young fellow has been gone a week now, hasn't he?"
"Yes, that is so, and Lizzie has seemed all broke down ever since. I was asking her yesterday to see Mr. Jeller, but she turned as white as anything.
"'No, no, Grandma,' she said, 'I'll not see any doctors. There's nothing the matter with me, nothing!'
"But there was a hard look came into her eyes, and the idea went through my mind that perhaps that gentlemanly looking fellow was just playing with her after all, and she had only found it out after her heart was gone from her."
Here the old lady stopped to wipe the tears from her faded eyes, while the blood of his youth flushed her husband's face and, with cane uplifted, he muttered fiercely:
"If I thought that, I'd cane him, old as I am! Lizzie's a good girl and has been as well raised and as well educated as the best of them, and if her father and grandfather before him were tradespeople, they were honest and respectable, and I don't know what better dowry a woman can need than her own virtues and accomplishments and a record behind her of generations of honorable people."
Here the old man again sank back in his chair, overcome by the violence of his emotions, while his wife, re-adjusting her glasses, moved aside the curtain and again peered out into the fast darkening street.
There was silence for a few moments and then her husband resumed his position at the other window, while the ticking of the clock echoed, painfully distinct, through the silent room, and the sound of passing feet grew fainter and fainter, and darkness, mingling with the impenetrable vapors of a London fog, settled heavily down upon the earth.
Certainly no girl could have a more happy home or two more tender, loving companions than had Elizabeth Merril.