Now the sight of these leaves and petals between the yellow pages softened her heart towards him; he was a tyrant, but he was very, very old, they were like flowers on a living tomb.
In a little while Grandfather Iden got up, and going to a drawer in one of the bookcases, took from it some scraps of memoranda; he thrust these between her face and the book, and told her to read them instead.
"These are your writing."
"Go on," said the old man, smiling, grunting, and coughing, all at once.
"In 1840," read Amaryllis, "there were only two houses in Black Jack Street." "Only two houses!" she interposed, artfully.
"Two," said the grandfather.
"One in 1802," went on Amaryllis, "while in 1775 the site was covered with furze." "How it has changed!" she said. He nodded, and coughed, and smiled; his great grey hat rocked on his head and seemed about to extinguish him.
"There's a note at the bottom in pencil, grandpa. It says, 'A hundred voters in this street, 1884.'"
"Ah!" said the old man, an ah! so deep it fetched his very heart up in coughing. When he finished, Amaryllis read on—