It is a terrible thing to see an old woman blush. The swift, dull almost thick red surged painfully to great-aunt Charlotte's face now, and her eyes were suddenly wide and dark, like a young girl's, startled. Then the red faded and left her face chalky, ghastly. It was as though a relentless hand had wrapped iron fingers around her heart and squeezed it and wrenched it once--tight and hard!--and then relaxed its grip. She peered at the boy standing there in the doorway; peered at him with dim old eyes that tried to pierce the veil of years and years and years. The others were talking. Charley had got her wraps from the hall, and was getting into her galoshes. This cumbersome and disfiguring footgear had this winter become the fad among university co-eds and South Side flappers. They wore galoshes on stormy days and fair. The craze had started during a blizzardy week in January. It was considered chic to leave the two top clasps or the two lower clasps open and flapping. The origin of this could readily be traced to breathless co-eds late for classes. All young and feminine Hyde Park now clumped along the streets, slim silken shins ending grotesquely in thick black felt-and-rubber. Jesse Dick stooped now to assist in the clasping of Charley's galoshes. He was down on one knee. Charley, teetering a little, put one hand on his head to preserve her balance. He looked up at her, smiling; she looked down at him, smiling. Almost sixty years of life swept back over great-aunt Charlotte Thrift and left her eighteen again; eighteen, and hoop-skirted in her second-best merino, with a green-velvet bonnet and a frill of blond lace, and little muddied boots and white stockings. She could not resist the force that impelled her now. She got up from her corner and came over to them. The talk went on in the living room. They did not notice her. "I knew your--I knew a Jesse Dick," she said, "years ago." The boy stood up. "Yes? Did you?" "He died in the Civil War. At Donelson. He was killed--at Donelson." The boy spatted his hands together a little, briskly, to rid them of a bit of dried mud that had clung to the galoshes. "That must have been my grandfather's brother," he said politely. "I've heard them speak of him." He had heard them speak of him. Charlotte Thrift, with seventy-four years of a ruined life heavy upon her, looked at him. He had heard them speak of him. "Pomroy Dick? Your grandfather? Pomroy Dick?" "Why, yes! Yes. Did you know him, too? He wasn't--we Dicks aren't--How did you happen to know him?" "I didn't know your grandfather Pomroy Dick," said Great-aunt Charlotte, and smiled so that the withered lips drew away from the blue-white, even teeth. "It was Jesse I knew." She looked up at him. "Jesse Dick." Charley leaned over and pressed her fresh dewy young lips to the parchment cheek. "Now isn't that interesting! Good-bye dear." She stopped and flashed a mischievous glance at the boy. "Was he a poet too, Aunt Charlotte?" "Yes."