They were walking along as they talked, and the young man made a mental note of old Jonas's pleasure. The sun was shining brightly, the air was fresh and cool, the jay-birds in the China trees were hilarious, and, somehow or other, the two young people felt very happy as they walked along. They had no particular reason for their happiness, but they seemed to be in the atmosphere in which happiness arises like the sparkling dew of early morning. A deaf old lady sitting on her piazza, on the opposite side of the street, smiled sweetly at Adelaide, and held her trumpet to her ear, as if, by means of its echoing depths, she could hear what the laughing young woman was saying. Adelaide did have something to say, evidently--something that an ear-trumpet could not interpret across the wide street, for she made a little gesture with her head, which her companion failed to see, and she sent some signal whirling through the air by means of a fluttering white hand. This signal he did see, but he was unfamiliar with the code that prevails among women-kind the world over: yet he had no difficulty in taking it to be an ordinary salutation, especially as the smiling old lady waved the trumpet around her head with an air of triumph. Still there was something in it all that seemed to be a trifle beyond him--and from the feminine point of view it was a neat and pretty piece of work. He had small opportunity to give the matter any thought, for Adelaide, laughing, turned toward him, and began to speak of the affection her Uncle Jonas had felt for Judge Bowden, and the high esteem in which he held the judge's memory. She acknowledged that it was very queer that a man long dead should play a living part in her uncle's thoughts, but she explained that people had wrong ideas about her uncle. "They seem to think," she declared, "that Uncle Jonas is very mean and stingy, and hard-hearted; but if they knew him as well as I do, they would think differently." The young fellow would have protested, but Adelaide stopped him with a dignified wave of her versatile white hand. "I know what people say," she insisted. "Mr. Sanders tells me, and so does Randall, whose life was saved by your mother; they tell me everything that is said about Uncle Jonas. And I always tell him about it, but he doesn't seem to care; he laughs as if it were a good joke, and declares that people have more sense than he has been willing to credit them with. Really, I believe he likes it, but it is not at all agreeable to me."