“And not young?”
“She is a great beauty, and better than young, because time has not touched her beauty, and you can see for yourself that it lasts.”
The young man laughed. “Oh, well,” he said, with a tender inflection, “I dare say that my Amy will look like that to me.”
“If she doesn’t you don’t love her,” said Lawton. “But my Eudora IS that.”
“That is a queer-sounding Greek name.”
“She is Greek, like her name. Such beauty never grows old. She stands on her pedestal, and time only looks at her to love her.”
“I thought you were a business man as hard as nails,” said the young man, wonderingly. Lawton laughed.
When Thursday came, Lawton, carefully dressed and carrying a long tissue-paper package, evidently of roses, approached the Yates house. It was late in the afternoon. There had been a warm day, and the trees were clouds of green and more bushes had blossomed. Eudora had put on a green silk dress of her youth. The revolving fashions had made it very passable, and the fabric was as beautiful as ever.
When Lawton presented her with the roses she pinned one in the yellowed lace which draped her bodice and put the rest in a great china vase on the table. The roses were very fragrant, and immediately the whole room was possessed by them.
A tiny, insistent cry came from a corner, and Lawton and Eudora turned toward it. There stood the old wooden cradle in which Eudora had been rocked to sleep, but over the clumsy hood Eudora had tacked a fall of rich old lace and a great bow of soft pink satin.