Page:Tom Beauling (1901).pdf/74

 long (though, to split hairs, we are all short); but, as is proper between comrades, Beauling did not feel superior because he had been born late in the century, nor was Judge Tyler envious because he had been born earlier therein. For better dividends than are declared to most were declared to both of them. And they spent a large joint income of affection and unselfishness. They were great friends.

Judge Tyler was white and old, but he stood erect and walked firmly. He boasted a stride as long as Beauling's, prided himself on unshaken strength, pretended that he did not sleep for an hour every afternoon—and Beauling was very gentle with the old man. The doctor across the way had gone to join his less fortunate patients. And old Ann, the cook, feminine to the last, had gone to her old home in Kilkenny, forsaking ease and plenty and the associations of fifty years that she might look once more and behold through filmy eyes the days of her youth, the hovel where she was