incongruously brave, gala-day appearance. Both were dressed in their
best. To be sure, Abraham's Sunday suit had long since become his only,
every-day suit as well, but he wore his Sabbath-day hat, a beaver of
ancient design, with an air that cast its reflection over all his
apparel. Angeline had on a black silk gown as shiny as the freshly
polished stove she was leaving in her kitchen--a gown which testified
from its voluminous hem to the soft yellow net at the throat that
Angeline was as neat a mender and darner as could be found in Suffolk
county.

A black silk bonnet snuggled close to her head, from under its brim
peeping a single pink rose. Every spring for ten years Angeline had
renewed the youth of this rose by treating its petals with the tender
red dye of a budding oak.

Under the pink rose, a soft pink flush bloomed on either of the old
lady's cheeks. Her eyes flashed with unconquerable pride, and her
square, firm chin she held very high; for now, indeed, she was filled
with terror of what "folks would say" to this home-leaving, and it was a
bright June afternoon, too clear for an umbrella with which to hide
one's face from prying neighbors, too late in the day for a sunshade.

Angy tucked the green-black affair which served them as both under her
arm and swung Abe's figured old carpet-bag in her hand with the manner
of one setting out on a pleasant journey. Abe, though resting heavily on
his stout, crooked cane, dragged behind him Angy's little horsehair
trunk upon a creaking, old, unusually large, toy express-wagon which he
had bought at some forgotten auction long ago.

The husband and wife passed into the garden between borders of boxwood,