The guests who danced at the wedding and afterward at the infare felt that the lifelong romance was a sort of community interest, and for many a year its details were familiarized by repetition about the fire-side or to the casual stranger. But Time is ever the mocker. The generation which had known the pair in the bloom and freshness of their beauty had in great part passed away. Their idyl of devotion and constancy gradually became farcical as the years imposed their blight. “Them old moth-eaten lovyers” was a phrase so apt in derisive description that it commended itself for general use to a community of later date and newer ideals. What a zest of jovial ridicule would the iconoclasts have enjoyed had it been known that it was only when one was sixty-five years of age and the other sixty-three that there had occurred their first experience of a lovers’ quarrel! For Benjie and Editha now were seriously regarded only by themselves. A steady, sober man was Benjamin Casey, of a peculiarly sane and reliable judgment, but it occasioned an outburst of unhallowed mirth in the vicinity when it was bruited abroad that he had been chosen on the venire for the petit jury at the next term of the court. “I’ll bet Editha goes, too,” exclaimed a gossip at the cross-roads store, delighted with the incongruity of the idea. “Sure,” acceded his interlocutor. “Benjie can’t serve on no panel ’thout Editha sets on the jury, too.” And, in fact, when the great day came for the journey to the county town, the rickety little wagon with the old white mare stood harnessed before the porch for an hour while Editha, in the toils of perplexity, decided on the details of her toilet for the momentous occasion, and Benjie bent the whole capacity of his substantial mind in the effort to aid her. The finishing touch to her costume of staid, brown homespun had a suggestion of sacrilege in the estimation of each. “I’d lament it ef it war ter git sp’iled anyways, Benjie,” she concluded at length, “but I dunno ez I will ever hev a more especial occasion ter wear this big silk neckerchief what that painter-man sent me in a letter from Glaston--I reckon fer hevin’ let him mark up my mantel-shelf so scandalous. Jus’ the color of the sky it is, an’ ez big ez a shoulder-shawl, an’ thick an’ glossy in the weave fer true. See! I hev honed ter view how I would look in it, but I hev never made bold ter put it on. Still, considerin’ I ain’t been in Shaftesvul sence the year I spent thar forty-six years ago, I don’t want ter look tacky in nowise; an’, then, I’ll he interjuced ter all them gentlemen of the jury, too.” Benjie solemnly averred himself of like opinion, and this important question thus settled, the afternoon brought them to Shaftesville, where they spent the night with relatives of Editha.