After it grew darker, you would see the girls in their neat blue calicoes go sauntering down the street with their sweethearts for a walk.  There was old Polston and his son Sam coming home from the coal-pits, as black as ink, with their little tin lanterns on their caps.  After a while Sam would come out in his suit of Kentucky jean, his face shining with the soap, and go sheepishly down to Jenny Ball’s, and the old man would bring his pipe and chair out on the pavement, and his wife would sit on the steps.  Most likely they would call Lois down, or come over themselves, for they were the most sociable, coziest old couple you ever knew.  There was a great stopping at Lois’s door, as the girls walked past, for a bunch of the flowers she brought from the country, or posies, as they called them, (Sam never would take any to Jenny but “old man” and pinks,) and she always had them ready in broken jugs inside.  They were good, kind girls, every one of them,—­had taken it in turn to sit up with Lois last winter all the time she had the rheumatism.  She never forgot that time,—­never once.

Later in the evening you would see an old man coming along, close by the wall, with his head down,—­a very dark man, with gray, thin hair,—­Joe Yare, Lois’s old father.  No one spoke to him,—­people always were looking away as he passed; and if old Mr. or Mrs. Polston were on the steps when he came up, they would say, “Good-evening, Mr. Yare,” very formally, and go away presently.  It hurt Lois more than anything else they could have done.  But she bustled about noisily, so that he would not notice it.  If they saw the marks of the ill life he had lived on his old face, she did not; his sad, uncertain eyes may have been dishonest to them, but they were nothing but kind to the misshapen little soul that he kissed so warmly with a “Why, Lo, my little girl!” Nobody else in the world ever called her by a pet name.

Sometimes he was gloomy and silent, but generally he told her of all that had happened in the mill, particularly any little word of notice or praise he might have received, watching her anxiously until she laughed at it, and then rubbing his hands cheerfully.  He need not have doubted Lois’s faith in him.  Whatever the rest did, she believed in him; she always had believed in him, through all the dark, dark years, when he was at home, and in the penitentiary.  They were gone now, never to come back.  It had come right.  She, at least, thought his repentance sincere.  If the others wronged him, and it hurt her bitterly that they did, that would come right some day too, she would think, as she looked at the tired, sullen face of the old man bent to the window-pane, afraid to go out.  They had very cheerful little suppers there by themselves in the odd, bare little room, as homely and clean as Lois herself.