The man who was curious as to the dame's remembrances was a small stout
person whose arms and legs did not seem to belong to him, and whose face
was strangely gnarled, like the odd face a boy might carve on a
hickory-nut, but withal a visage pleasant and ruddy.

"That," said Mistress White as he moved away, "is Mr. Schmidt--an old
boarder with some odd ways of his own which we mostly forgive. A good
man if it were not for his pipe," she added demurely--"altogether a good
man."

"With or without his pipe," said Mr. Wholesome.

"Richard!" returned our hostess, with a half smile.

"Without his pipe," he added; and the unseen demons twitched at the
corners of his mouth anew.

Altogether, these seemed to me droll people, they said so little, and,
saving the small German, were so serenely grave. I suppose that first
evening must have made a deep mark on my memory, for to this day I
recall it with the clearness of a picture still before my eyes. Between
the windows sat the old dame with hands quiet on her lap now that the
twilight had grown deeper--a silent, gray Quaker sphinx, with one only
remembrance out of all her seventy years of life. In the open window sat
as in a frame the daughter, a woman of some twenty-five years, rosy yet
as only a Quakeress can be when rebel Nature flaunts on the soft cheek
the colors its owner may not wear on her gray dress. The outline was of
a face clearly cut and noble, as if copied from a Greek gem--a face
filled with a look of constant patience too great perhaps for one
woman's share, with a certain weariness in it also at times, yet