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“You are so jolly companionable, don’t you know,” he would say to her. “Most girls are bores; don’t know enough to have anything to talk about, and want to be flattered and flirted with all the time. But I feel as if you were just another fellow, don’t you know.”

“Oh, I am used to the role of companion,” she would reply.

With the first days of June he returned to Boston, and the sun turned gray for one woman.

Life went its way in the old house. People became accustomed to the spectacle of Miss Webster rejuvenated, and forgot to flatter. It may be added that men forgot to propose, in spite of the four millions. Deeper grew the gulf between the two women. Once in every week Abby vowed she would leave, but habit was too strong. Once in every week Miss Webster vowed she would turn the companion out, but dependence on the younger woman had grown into the fibres of her old being.

Strowbridge returned the following summer. Almost immediately he called on Miss Williams.

“I feel as if you were one of the oldest friends I have in the world, don’t you know,” he said, as they sat together on the veranda. “And I’ve brought you a little present–if you don’t mind. I thought maybe you wouldn’t.”

He took a small case from his pocket, touched a spring, and revealed a tiny gold watch and fob. “You know,” he had said to himself apologetically as he bought it, “I can give it to her because she’s so much older than myself. It’s not vulgar, like giving handsome presents to girls. And then we are friends. I’m sure she won’t mind, poor old thing!” Nevertheless, he looked at her with some apprehension.

His misgivings proved to be vagaries of his imagination. Abby gazed at the beautiful toy with radiant face. “For me!” she exclaimed–“that lovely thing? And you really bought it for me?”

“Why, of course I did,” he said, too relieved to note the significance of her pleasure. “And you’ll take it?”

“Indeed I’ll take it.” She laid it on her palm and looked at it with rapture. She fastened the fob in a buttonhole of her blouse, but removed it with a shake of the head. “I’ll just keep it to look at, and only wear it with my black silk. It’s out of place on this rusty alpaca.”

“What a close-fisted old girl the Circus must–“

“Oh, hush, hush! She might hear you.” Abby rose hastily. “Let us walk in the garden.”

They sauntered between the now well-kept lawns and flower-beds and entered a long avenue of fig-trees. The purple fruit hung abundantly among the large green leaves. Miss Williams opened one of the figs and showed Strowbridge the red luscious pith.

“You don’t have these over there.”

“We don’t. Are they good to eat this way?”

She held one of the oval halves to his mouth.

“Eat!” she said.

And he did. Then he ate a dozen more that she broke for him.

“I feel like a greedy school-boy,” he said. “But they are good, and no mistake. You have introduced me to another pleasure. Now let us go and take a pull.”

All that afternoon there was no mirror to tell her that she was not the girl who had come to Webster Hall a quarter of a century before. That night she knelt long by her bed, pressing her hands about her face.

“I am a fool, I know,” she thought, “but such things have been. If only I had a little of her money.”

The next day she went down to the lake, not admitting that she expected him to take her out; it would be enough to see him. She saw him. He rowed past with Elinor Holt, the most beautiful girl of the lakeside. His gaze was fixed on the flushed face, the limpid eyes. He did not look up.

Miss Williams walked back to the house with the odd feeling that she had been smitten with paralysis and some unseen force was propelling her. But she was immediately absorbed in the manifold duties of the housekeeping. When leisure came reaction had preceded it.