fact the pair had not been on terms of intercourse by speech or
letter since her husband's decease twelve years ago. (There had been
some unpleasantness over the Will.)

"I have been expecting it for a long while," asseverated Mrs Polsue.
"Gracious! Why?"

"You are panting. You are short of breath. You should be more
careful of yourself than to come hurrying down the hill at such a
rate, at your time of life," said Mrs Polsue. "It reddens the face,
too: which is a consideration if you insist on wearing that bit of
crimson in your hat. The two shades don't go together."

"It is not crimson. It is cherry," said Miss Oliver.

"Which, dear?"

"The ribbon, Mary-Martha. You should wear glasses. . . . But I
started late," Miss Oliver confessed. "I didn't like to show myself
walking to Chapel, and so many of the men-folk passing in the
opposite direction. It seemed so _marked_." She might have
confessed further (but did not) that she had waited, peeping over her
blind, to see the brakes go by. "But _you_ were late too," she
added.

"If you will use your reason, Cherry Oliver, it might tell you that I
couldn't get past the crowd on the bridge, and was _forced_ to wait."

"Dear me, now! Was it so thick as all that? . . . You know, I can't
see the bridge from my back window--only a bit of the Old Doctor's