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 meet him with equal affection. But she just sat there, looking down at her hands. He took them, to stop the hated gesture. The bantam over the hill repeated his rollicking sharp salute, which would have been an epigram if he had uttered it only once.

"I wish you could stop that rooster," she said. "Over and over again, the same identical squawk. I wouldn't mind so much if he wasn't a bantam. It makes it seem so silly, somehow. He goes out under those great tall pine trees and shouts at them."

He smiled and turned her face toward him. She looked pitiably tired. He knew how she would look when she was old.

"Perhaps he's rather like me," he said.

"There was one here that crowed just like that when we were children. The same note exactly."

"It's heredity. Probably this is his great-great-great-great-grand-egg."

She reached under the pillow, pulled out the little flattened handkerchief, and stood up.

"I must hurry. I'd give anything if to-day were over. I suppose life is like this, just day after day."

"Give me that," he said, taking the handkerchief. "I've seen it before."