“Well, you know the one-story-and-attic place, painted brown, and flat-roofed, just beyond where the Truemans live. It seems as if I had had more than forty tenants for that place. Everybody that can’t keep a store anywhere, and make a living, seems to hit upon that identical building to fail in. Old Ikey Peters was the last; he started a sort of fish store, along with peanuts and toys and root beer, and he came to me a month or two back and said it was no go; he couldn’t pay the rent any more, and he’d got a job as night watchman: so if he found another tenant, might he turn it over to him until the first of May, when his year would be up? and I said, ‘Yes, if it isn’t for a saloon.’ And next I heard he had rented the place to a woman who had come from Tecumseh to start a milliner’s shop. I went past there a few days afterward, and I saw Ben Lawton fooling around inside with a jack-plane, fixing up a table; but even then I hadn’t a suspicion in the world. It must have been a week later that I went by again, and there I saw the sign over the door, ‘J. Lawton--Millinery;’ and would you believe it, even _then_ I didn’t dream of what was up! So in walks I, to say ‘how do you do,’ and lo and behold! there was Ben Lawton’s eldest girl running the place, and quite as much at home as I was. You could have knocked me over with a feather!” “Quite appropriately, in a milliner’s shop, too,” said Kate, who had taken a chair opposite to Tabitha’s and seemed really interested in her narrative. “Well, there she was, anyway.” “And what happened next? Did you faint or run away, or what?” “Oh, she was quite civil, I must say. She recognized me--she used to see me at my sister’s when she worked there--and asked me to sit down, and explained that she hadn’t got entirely settled yet. Yes, I must admit that she was polite enough.” “How tiresome of her! Now, if she had thrown boiling water on you, or even made faces at you, it would have been something like. But to ask you to sit down! And _did_ you sit down, Tabitha?” “I don’t see how I could have done otherwise. And she really has a great deal of taste in her work. She saw in a minute what’s been the trouble with my bonnets--you know I always told you there was something--they were not high enough in front. Don’t you think yourself, now, that this is an improvement?” Miss Wilcox lifted her chin, and turned her head slowly around for inspection; but, instead of the praise which was expected, there came a merry outburst of laughter. “And you really bought a bonnet of her!” Kate laughed again at the thought, and then, with a sudden impulse, rose from her chair, glided swiftly to where Tabitha sat, and kissed her. “You softhearted, ridiculous, sweet old thing!” she said, beaming at her, and smoothing the old maid’s cheek in affectionate patronage.