Page:Middle Aged Love Stories (IA middleagedlove00bacorich).djvu/148

 pleasantly, deferentially; and for ten years M. Laroche had taken his cup, preceded her to the door that opened directly on the piazza, bowed low as he held it for her to pass, and exclaimed with an ever-fresh enthusiasm, "Ze porrch, by all means!"

It was a pleasant porch with a climbing vine and a box of scarlet geraniums, and directly in front of it a little unfenced green with a small fountain the park of the street, which was one of those clean and faded byways of a rapidly growing city that surprise the discoverer with a sense of what the old town used to be two generations ago. The rumble of the city died away before one entered Maple Avenue; the women sat and gossiped on the stoops; the children played happily in the park; the late afternoon seemed almost rural as the sun slanted through the maples that shaded either side of the narrow, dusty road.

Miss Sabina finished her coffee and