Kitty did not answer him. The tears ran hot and salt over her round
cheeks as she watched the little man disappear through the walnuts.
She went up stairs, and, still crying, chose one or two maudlin
sonnets and a lock of black hair as mementoes to keep of him. She did
keep them as long as she lived, and used frequently to sigh over them
with a sentimental tenderness which the real Muller never had won from
her.




CHAPTER XII.


Miss Muller's message was never delivered, but Doctor McCall did not
leave Berrytown that morning. Going down the road, he had caught sight
of the old Book-house, and Kitty in her pink wrapper at the window. He
overheard Symmes, the clerk at the station, say to some lounger that
Peter Guinness would be at home that day or the next. He took his
valise to the baggage-room.

"My business is not pressing," he said to Symmes. "No need to be off
until this evening."

Perhaps he could see the old man, himself unseen, he thought with a
boyish choking in his throat. He could surely give one more day to the
remembrance of that old sweet, hearty boy's life without wronging the
wretched ghost of a wife whose hand clutched so much away from him.