He glanced across at the Chenowiths again, and they seemed remote from him, of another generation in fact, though but a few moments before he had looked on them as contemporaries. And then suddenly there came to him the fear that Mr. Chenowith might run over to chat with him, as was his habit, and the judge hastily rose, and almost surreptitiously went off the end of the porch and around into the side yard. Under the new impression of age that he had grown into, he walked slowly, with a senile stoop, and dragged his feet as he went. He wandered about in the yard for a long while, looking at the shrubs and bushes and trees he had planted himself so long ago, when he was young. It occurred to him that here in this garden he would potter around, and pass his declining years. He remained in the yard until his wife came to call him in to the supper she had prepared, in the Sunday evening absence of the hired girl, and with an effort he brought himself back from the future to the present. "How is she?" "Oh, she's all right," said Mrs. Blair, in her usual cheery tone. "I didn't go to her, I thought it best to leave her alone." The judge looked at his wife, with her rosy face, and her full figure still youthful in the simple summer gown she wore. He looked at her curiously, wondering why it was she seemed so young; a width of years seemed all at once to separate them. Mrs. Blair noted this look of her husband's. She noted it with pity for him; he looked older to her. "I think it would be nice for you to take Lavinia with you when you go to Put-in-Bay to the Bar Association meeting," she said. It seemed strange and anomalous to Judge Blair that he should still be attending Bar Association meetings. "I'll see," he said; and then he qualified, "if I go." "If you go?" his wife exclaimed. "Why, you're down for a paper!" "So I am," said the judge. They turned toward the house, and the judge took his wife's arm, leaning rather heavily on it. "Will!" she said, after they had gone a few steps in this fashion. "What is the matter with you! You walk like an old man!" She shook his arm off, and said: "Hurry up now. The coffee will be getting cold." Indoors, they passed Connie going through the hall; she had just come down the stairs, and the sight of her girlish figure, and her short skirts just sweeping the tops of her shoes, gladdened the judge's heart, and he smiled. He could rely on Connie, anyway, for sympathy. But the girl gave him a sharp reproachful stare from her dark eyes, and the judge felt utterly deserted. Lavinia did not come down to her supper, though her mother, knowing she would want it later, kept the coffee warm on the back of the kitchen stove. Chad had gone away with one of the Weston boys. So the three, the judge, Mrs. Blair and Connie, ate their supper alone.