Mrs. John sighed.
"I know, dear," she began plaintively; "but, don't you see? it won't be
the same--it can't be. Why, some of those things we've had ever since we
were married. They seemed a part of me, John. I was used to them. I had
grown up with some of them--those candlesticks of mamma's, for instance,
that she had when I was a bit of a baby. Do you think money can buy
another pair that--that were
hers?" And Mrs. John burst into
tears.
"Come, come, dear," protested her husband, with a hasty caress and a
nervous glance at the clock--he was due at the bank in ten minutes."
Don't fret about what can't be helped; besides"-and he laughed
whimsically--"you must look out or you'll be getting as bad as mother
over her hair wreath!" And with another hasty pat on her shoulder he was
gone.
Mrs. John suddenly stopped her crying. She lowered her handkerchief and
stared fixedly at an old print on the wall opposite. The hotel--though
strictly modern in cuisine and management--was an old one, and prided
itself on the quaintness of its old-time furnishings. Just what the
print represented Mrs. John could not have told, though her eyes did not
swerve from its face for five long minutes. What she did see was a
silent, dismantled farmhouse, and a little old man and a little old
woman with drawn faces and dumb lips.
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