“He manages to eat his meals, and gets along as common,” she would reply. “He only thinks of himself and that railroad.” But Austen read between the lines. “Poor old Judge,” he would answer; “it's because he's made that way, Phrasie. He can't help it, any more than I can help flinging law-books on the floor and running off to the country to have a good time. You know as well as I do that he hasn't had much joy out of life; that he'd like to be different, only he doesn't know how.” “I can't see that it takes much knowledge to treat a wife and son like human beings,” Euphrasia retorted; “that's only common humanity. For a man that goes to meetin' twice a week, you'd have thought he'd have learned something by this time out of the New Testament. He's prayed enough in his life, goodness knows!” Now Euphrasia's ordinarily sharp eyes were sharpened an hundred fold by affection; and of late, at odd moments during his visits, Austen had surprised them fixed on him with a penetration that troubled him. “You don't seem to fancy the tarts as much as you used to,” she would remark. “Time was when you'd eat three and four at a sittin'.” “Phrasie, one of your persistent fallacies is, that I'm still a boy.” “You ain't yourself,” said Euphrasia, ignoring this pleasantry, “and you ain't been yourself for some months. I've seen it. I haven't brought you up for nothing. If he's troubling you, don't you worry a mite. He ain't worth it. He eats better than you do.” “I'm not worrying much about that,” Austen answered, smiling. “The Judge and I will patch it up before long--I'm sure. He's worried now over these people who are making trouble for his railroad.” “I wish railroads had never been invented,” cried Euphrasia. “It seems to me they bring nothing but trouble. My mother used to get along pretty well in a stage-coach.” One evening in September, when the summer days were rapidly growing shorter and the mists rose earlier in the valley of the Blue, Austen, who had stayed late at the office preparing a case, ate his supper at the Ripton House. As he sat in the big dining room, which was almost empty, the sense of loneliness which he had experienced so often of late came over him, and he thought of Euphrasia. His father, he knew, had gone to Kingston for the night, and so he drove up Hanover Street and hitched Pepper to the stone post before the door. Euphrasia, according to an invariable custom, would be knitting in the kitchen at this hour; and at the sight of him in the window, she dropped her work with a little, joyful cry. “I was just thinking of you!” she said, in a low voice of tenderness which many people would not have recognized as Euphrasia's; as though her thoughts of him were the errant ones of odd moments! “I'm so glad you come. It's lonesome here of evenings, Austen.” He entered silently and sat down beside her, in a Windsor chair which had belonged to some remote Austen of bygone days.