their hair gleamed touches of silver, and their cheeks might have
reminded you of tinted apples which had lightly been kissed with the
frost.

And so they sat looking at each other, intently, almost breathlessly,
each suddenly moved by the same question and each wishing that the other
would speak.

For the second time it was Cordelia who broke the silence.

"Patty--!"

"Yes, dear?" breathed Patty, and left her lips slightly parted.

"I wonder if Josiah--is too old--to marry again! Of course," she
hurriedly added, "he is fifty-two--but it seems to me that one of the
Spicers--I think it was Captain Abner Spicer--had children until he was
sixty--although by a younger wife, of course."

They looked it up and in so doing they came across an Ezra Babcock,
father-in-law of the Third Josiah Spencer, who had had a son proudly born
to him in his sixty-fourth year.

They gazed at each other then, those two maiden sisters, like two
conspirators in their precious innocence.

"If we could find Josiah a young wife--" said the elder at last.

"Oh, Cordelia!" breathed Patty, "if, indeed, we only could!"