Page:The lady or the tiger and other stories, Stockton (Scribner's 1897 ed).djvu/67

Rh pencilled profiles of their grandfather, their grandmother, and their father when a little boy, which hung in a row over the mantel-piece.

However, Pepton did not ask this sacrifice. In the summer evenings, the parlor windows must be open. The dining-room was really very little used in the evening, except when Miss Maria had stockings to darn; and then she always sat in that apartment, and of course she had the windows open. But Miss Maria was very willing to bring her work into the parlor,—it was foolish, any way, to have a feeling about darning stockings before chance company,—and then the dining-room could be kept shut up after tea. So into the wall of that neat little room Pepton drove his worsted-covered nails, and on them carefully laid his bow. And the next day Miss Martha and Miss Maria went about the house, and covered the nail-holes he had made with bits of wall-paper, carefully snipped out to fit the patterns, and pasted on so neatly that no one would have suspected they were there.

One afternoon, as I was passing the old ladies' house, I saw, or thought I saw, two men carrying in a coffin. I was struck with alarm.

"What!" I thought, "can either of those good women?—— Or, can Pepton?"——

Without a moment's hesitation, I rushed in behind the men. There, at the foot of the stairs, directing them, stood Pepton. Then it was not he! I seized him sympathetically by the hand.

"Which?"—— I faltered. "Which? Who is that coffin for?"