"Look, Mabel! There's Mr. Morgan going to call on Miss Rood," said Lucy softly. "Oh, do look, George!" said Mabel eagerly. "That old gentleman has been paying court to an old maid over in that little house for forty years. And to think," she added in a lower tone, intended for his private ear, "what a fuss you make about waiting six months!" "Humph! You please to forget that it's easier to wait for some things than for others. Six months of my kind of waiting, I take it, require more patience than forty years of his--or any other man's," he added with increased emphasis. "Be quiet, sir!" replied Mabel, answering his look of unruly admiration with one of half pique. "I'm not a sugar-plum, that's not enjoyed till it's in the mouth. If you haven't got me now, you'll never have me. If being engaged isn't enough, you don't deserve to be married." And then, seeing the blank expression with which he looked down at her, she added with a prescient resignedness, "I'm afraid, dear, you'll be so disappointed when we're married if you find this so tedious." Lucy had discreetly wandered away, and of how they made it up there were no witnesses. But it seems likely that they did so, for shortly after they wandered away together down the darkening street. Like most of the Plainfield houses, that at which Mr. Morgan turned in stood well back from the street. At a side window, still further sheltered from view by a syringa-bush at the house corner, sat a little woman with a small pale face, the still attractive features perceptibly sharpened by years, of which the half-gray hair bore further testimony. The eyes, just now fixed absently upon the dusking landscape, were light gray and a little faded, while around the lips there were crowsfeet, especially when they were pressed together, as now, in an unsatisfied, almost pathetic look, evidently habitual to her face when in repose. There was withal something in her features that so reminded you of Mr. Morgan that any one conversant with the facts of his life-romance would have at once inferred--though by just what logic he might not be able to explain--that this must be Miss Rood. It is well known that long-wedded couples often gain at length a certain resemblance in feature and manner; and although these two were not married, yet their intimacy of a lifetime was perhaps the reason why her face bore when in repose something of that seer-like expression which communion with the bodiless shapes of memory had given to his. The latching of the gate broke up her depressing revery and banished the pinched and pining look from her features. Among the neighbors Miss Rood was sometimes called a sour old maid, but the face she kept for Mr. Morgan would never have suggested that idea to the most ill-natured critic.