The fish-carts were still there just as they had been when she was a girl, but the army of black-robed housekeepers had changed or melted away. Here, also, the physical details of life had survived the beings for whose use or comfort they had come into existence. The meat and the vegetable stalls were standing in orderly rows about the octagonal building; wilted cabbage leaves littered the dusty floor; flies swarmed around the bleeding forms hanging from hooks in the sunshine; even Mr. Dewlap, hale and red-cheeked, offered her white pullets out of the wooden coop at his feet. So little had the physical scene changed since the morning, more than twenty-five years ago, of her meeting with Oliver, that while she paused there beside Mr. Dewlap's stall, one of the older generation might have mistaken her for her mother. "My dear Virginia," said a voice at her back, and, turning, she found Mrs. Peachey, a trifle rheumatic, but still plump and pretty. "I'm so glad you come to the old market, my child. I suppose you cling to it because of your mother, and then things are really so much dearer uptown, don't you think so?" "Yes, I dare say they are, but I've got into the habit of coming here." "One does get into habits. Now I've bought chickens from Mr. Dewlap for forty years. I remember your mother and I used to say that there were no chickens to compare with his white pullets." "I remember. Mother was a wonderful housekeeper." "And you are too, my dear. Everybody says that you have the best table in Dinwiddie!" Her small rosy face, framed in the shirred brim of her black silk bonnet, was wrinkled with age, but even her wrinkles were cheerful ones, and detracted nothing from the charming archness of her expression. Unconquerable still, she went her sprightly way, on rheumatic limbs, towards the grave. "Have you seen dear Miss Priscilla?" asked Virginia, striving to turn the conversation away from herself, and shivering with terror lest the other should ask after Oliver, whom she had always adored. "I stopped to inquire about her on my way down. She had had a bad night, the maid said, and Doctor Fraser is afraid that the cold she got when she went driving the other day has settled upon her lungs." "Oh, I am so sorry!" exclaimed Virginia, but she was conscious of an immeasurable relief because Miss Priscilla's illness was absorbing Mrs. Peachey's thoughts. "Well, I must be going on," said the little lady, and though she flinched with pain when she moved, the habitual cheerfulness of her face did not alter. "Come to see me as often as you can, Jinny. I can't get about much now, and it is such a pleasure for me to have somebody to chat with. People don't visit now," she added regretfully, "as much as they used to." "So many things have changed," said Virginia, and her eyes, as she gazed up at the blue sky over the market, had a yearning look in them. So many things had changed--ah, there was the pang!