“He bowed.”
“I suppose he thought he recognized me.”
“He looks old enough to be her grandfather, but he looks like a fine man. I hope she will make him a good wife. It is a risk for a man of his age, marrying a little young thing. I wonder why Samson Rawdy was bringing him from the station. Strange the Carroll carriage didn't meet him, wasn't it?”
“Perhaps they were not expecting him,” replied Randolph, which was true.
The carriage occupied by Major Arms and Samson Rawdy overtook Ina and Charlotte before they had walked far, in front of Drake's drug-store. They had stopped in there for soda, in fact, and were just coming out.
“Why, there's Major Arms!” cried Charlotte, so loudly that some lounging men in the drug-store heard her. Drake, Amidon, and the postmaster, who had just stopped, stood in the doorway, with no attempt to disguise their interest, and watched Major Arms spring out of the carriage like a boy, kiss his sweetheart, utterly unmindful of their observance, then assist the sisters to the back seat, and spring to the front himself.
“Pretty spry for an old boy,” remarked the postmaster as the carriage rolled away.
“Oh, he's Southern,” returned Amidon, easily. “That is why. Catch a Yankee his age with joints as limber. The cold winters here stiffen folk up quick after they get middle-aged.”
“You don't seem very stiff in the joints,” said Drake, jocularly. “Guess you are near as old as that man.”
“I'm a right smart stiffer than I'd been ef I'd stayed South,” replied Amidon.