“Quite well, I thank you.  What—­”

“And the little wife?” said Elder Brown, affectionately retaining the Jew’s hand.

“Quite well, sir.”

“And the little ones—­quite well, I hope, too?”

“Yes, sir; all well, thank you.  Something I can do for you?”

The affable merchant was trying to recall his customer’s name.

“Not now, not now, thankee.  If you please to let my bundles stay untell I come back—­”

“Can’t I show you something?  Hat, coat—­”

“Not now.  Be back bimeby.”

Was it chance or fate that brought Elder Brown in front of a bar?  The glasses shone bright upon the shelves as the swinging door flapped back to let out a coatless clerk, who passed him with a rush, chewing upon a farewell mouthful of brown bread and bologna.  Elder Brown beheld for an instant the familiar scene within.  The screws of his resolution had been loosened.  At sight of the glistening bar the whole moral structure of twenty years came tumbling down.  Mechanically he entered the saloon, and laid a silver quarter upon the bar as he said: 

“A little whiskey an’ sugar.”  The arms of the bartender worked like a faker’s in a side show as he set out the glass with its little quota of “short sweetening” and a cut-glass decanter, and sent a half-tumbler of water spinning along from the upper end of the bar with a dime in change.

“Whiskey is higher’n used to be,” said Elder Brown; but the bartender was taking another order, and did not hear him.  Elder Brown stirred away the sugar, and let a steady stream of red liquid flow into the glass.  He swallowed the drink as unconcernedly as though his morning tod had never been suspended, and pocketed the change.  “But it ain’t any better than it was,” he concluded, as he passed out.  He did not even seem to realize that he had done anything extraordinary.

There was a millinery store up the street, and thither with uncertain step he wended his way, feeling a little more elate, and altogether sociable.  A pretty, black-eyed girl, struggling to keep down her mirth, came forward and faced him behind the counter.  Elder Brown lifted his faded hat with the politeness, if not the grace, of a Castilian, and made a sweeping bow.  Again he was in his element.  But he did not speak.  A shower of odds and ends, small packages, thread, needles, and buttons, released from their prison, rattled down about him.

The girl laughed.  She could not help it.  And the elder, leaning his hand on the counter, laughed, too, until several other girls came half-way to the front.  Then they, hiding behind counters and suspended cloaks, laughed and snickered until they reconvulsed the elder’s vis-a-vis, who had been making desperate efforts to resume her demure appearance.