"He seems a joking sort of man," said Mary. "Once he came up to buy a
paper, and gave me half a sovereign instead of sixpence to change, and
when I told him he'd made a mistake he laughed a lot, and said he wanted
to know if I could tell the difference. He never sees me now without
speaking of it and laughing."

"Yes," said Anne; "he's fond of rough jokes of his own making, and
thinks that giving people material things makes them happy," she
continued in her bookish manner. "I remember just such another man as
him, a boisterous sort of man, whose old father was dying, who took the
old man out to look at a new grand-stand they were making. Poor old man!
It was pitiful to see him in the presence of eternity, looking at a new
grand-stand."

"I suppose, being as I am," said Mary, "there's a lot of temptations
been spared to me."

"I wish we were all as kind and charitable as you," said Anne. "I never
heard you say a hard thing of anybody all the years I've known you."




CHAPTER XII


Winter hastens his pace when the harvest is gathered, and it was one of
those serene winter days on which, if one sat in a sheltered place full
of sunshine, one might believe that the spring had begun; as if winter,