“It’s my eyes, d’ye see?” he was saying, when she attended to him again, and emphasising his remarks with sharp flaps of the Canadian packet. “I’ll have to be seeing about getting glasses. Anyhow, the letter’s here all right, and none the worse for a bit of extra travelling.... It’ll be a likeness, I reckon, from the look of it,” he finished, handing it to her at last with an air of making a concession. It probably _was_ a likeness, Mattie told him, holding it in her hands with the same curious sense of reluctance in her fingers. She might have told him more but for that remark of his about his eyes, reminding her as it did of the increasing disadvantages of age. Dick had seen many a snapshot of her family in his time, and had not thought twice about giving his own opinion of them, either.... “My folks Over There are always sending me something to look at.” “They’ll not be sending much longer, if all tales is true!” Dick’s eyes seemed keen enough now, as they lifted themselves, twinkling. “There’s barely a house I call at but somebody asks me when Mrs. Kirkby’s off to Canada!” Mattie laughed in return, but with a slight nervousness that surprised her. She had only to mention the “notice,” and the whole place would be agog, making it, with every reference to the subject, more certain and more “real.” But something, which she took to be loyalty to Kirkby, held her back from speaking. “Ay, well, and what d’you say to that?” she compromised, by way of answer. Dick shifted his bag and shuffled his feet, finally clearing his throat like one preparing for an oration. “Well, if you want to know, ten year ago I said you’d be off as sharp as a dog to its kennel. Five year ago, I said--‘Ay, well, less likely things has happened.’ But to-day, when they ax me, I say I wouldn’t believe it even if I was to see it.” The colour rose higher yet in Mattie’s face, but the thing that lay close in her heart was too warm for a show of temper. “Whatever makes you say that?” she queried innocently. For the first time Dick showed signs of discomfort, turning about a little, and looking away from her. “Nay, it’s just that you’re not so young, these days,” he returned at last, bravely. “Same age as myself, I’ve heard my old mother say, and you’d not catch _me_ crossing t’ ocean if you give me Canada!” “Folks are as young as they feel,” Mattie said, trying to repress the pang which had seized her when he mentioned the ocean. “The sea’s nothing to me! As for age and such-like, there’s folks go abroad when they’re a deal older than us. What, I remember Mrs. Dugdale going off to New Zealand when she was nigh on ninety!” “Ay, but they go sudden-like,” Dick said, wrinkling his brow as if to help the working of his brain. “They don’t sit planning a sight o’ years. Things is sudden-like when they’re meant.”