then hunting for a piece of string to tie it. When he handed it to me at
last, he gasped out: 'I don't mind her knowing that I partly meant it as
the place where _she_ first met _you_, too. I'm not ashamed of it as a
bit of color. Anyway, I sha'n't live to do anything better.'

"'Oh, yes, you will,' I came back in that lying way we think is kind
with dying people. I suppose it is; anyway, it turned out all right with
Blakey, as he'll testify if you look him up when you go to Florence. By
the way, he lives in that villa _now_."

"No?" I said. "How charming!"

Minver's brother went on: "I made up my mind to be awfully careful of
that picture, and not let it out of my hand till I left it with 'her'
mother, to be put among the other wedding presents that were
accumulating at their house in Exeter Street. So I held it on my lap
going in by train from Lexington, where Blakey lived, and when I got out
at the old Lowell Depot--North Station, now--and got into the little
tinkle-tankle horse-car that took me up to where I was to get the Back
Bay car--Those were the prehistoric times before trolleys, and there
were odds in horse-cars. We considered the blue-painted Back Bay cars
very swell. _You_ remember them?" he asked Minver.

"Not when I can help it," Minver answered. "When I broke with Boston,
and went to New York, I burnt my horse-cars behind me, and never wanted
to know what they looked like, one from another."

"Well, as I was saying," Minver's brother went on, without regarding his
impatriotism, "when I got into the horse-car at the depot, I rushed for
a corner seat, and I put the picture, with its face next the car-end,