walk."

"We've brought an overcoat--Kesiah and I--a good thick one, for your
grandfather. It worried us last winter that he went so lightly clad
during the snow storms."

Molly's face changed, and her eyes sparkled with pleasure.

"Oh, thank you, thank you!" she exclaimed, losing her manner of distant
politeness. "I've been trying to persuade him to buy one, but he hates
to spend money on himself."

Kesiah, who had leaned back during the conversation, with the scowling
look she wore when her heart was moved, nodded grimly while she felt in
the black travelling bag she carried for Mrs. Gay's salts. She was one
of those unfortunate women of a past generation, who, in offering no
allurement to the masculine eye, appeared to defeat the single end
for which woman was formed. As her very right to existence lay in her
possible power to attract, the denial of that power by nature, or the
frustration of it by circumstances, had deprived her, almost from
the cradle, of her only authoritative reason for being. Her small,
short-sighted eyes, below a false front which revealed rather than
obscured her bare temples, flitted from object to object as though in
the vain pursuit of some outside justification of her indelicacy in
having permitted herself to be born.

"Samson tells me that my son has come, Molly," said Mrs. Gay, in a
flutter of emotion. "Have you had a glimpse of him yet?"

The girl nodded. "He took supper at our house the night he got here."