The afternoon was waning. Gradually over the turmoil of their hearts
stole the garden's June-time spirit of drowsy repose.

They leaned even closer to each other. The gray of the old man's hair
mingled with the gray beneath Angeline's little bonnet. Slowly his eyes
closed. Then even as Angy wondered who would watch over the slumbers of
his worn old age in the poorhouse, she, too, fell asleep.




III

THE CANDIDATE


The butcher's boy brought the tidings of the auction sale in at the
kitchen door of the Old Ladies' Home even while Angy and Abe were
lingering over their posies, and the inmates of the Home were waiting to
receive the old wife with the greater sympathy and the deeper spirit of
welcome from the fact that two of the twenty-nine members had known her
from girlhood, away back in the boarding-school days.

"Yop," said the boy, with one eye upon the stout matron, who was
critically examining the meat that he had brought. "Yop, the auction's
over, an' Cap'n Rose, he--Don't that cut suit you, Miss Abigail? You
won't find a better, nicer, tenderer, and more juicier piece of shoulder
this side of New York. Take it back, did you say? All right, ma'am, all
right!" His face assumed a look of resignation: these old ladies made