“Thank you, Jim.  Yes, I understand; and I’ll speak to him.”

Was it that the sun was going down, or that some clouds were in the sky, or had the air of the shop oppressed him?  Whatever it was, as he came out he walked with a slower step from which some of the spring had gone, and the people’s faces looked not so happy; and, glancing down at his rosebud, he saw that its fair petals had been soiled by the smoke and grime in which he had been standing; and, while he looked a dead march came solemnly sounding up the street, and a soldier’s funeral went by,—­rare enough, in that autumn of 1860, to draw a curious crowd on either side; rare enough to make him pause and survey it; and as the line turned into another street, and the music came softened to his ear, he once more hummed the words of the song which had been haunting him all the day:—­

  “Then mounte! then mounte, brave gallants, all,
  And don your helmes amaine;
  Death’s couriers, Fame and Honor, call
  Us to the field againe,”—­

sang them to himself, but not with the gay, bright spirit of the morning.  Then he seemed to see the cavaliers, brilliant and brave, riding out to the encounter.  Now, in the same dim and fanciful way, he beheld them stretched, still and dead, upon the plain.

CHAPTER II

  “Thou—­drugging pain by patience.”

  Arnold

“Laces cleaned, and fluting and ruffling done here,”—­that was what the little sign swinging outside the little green door said.  And, coming under it into the cosey little rooms, you felt this was just the place in which to leave things soiled and torn, and come back to find them, by some mysterious process, immaculate and whole.

Two rooms, with folding-doors between, in which through the day stood a counter, cut up on the one side into divers pigeon-holes rilled with small boxes and bundles, carefully pinned and labelled,—­owner’s name, time left, time to be called for, money due; neat and nice as a new pin, as every one said who had any dealings there.

The counter was pushed back now, as always after seven o’clock, for the people who came in the evening were few; and then, when that was out of the way, it seemed more home-like and less shoppy, as Mrs. Franklin said every night, as she straightened things out, and peered through the window or looked from the front door, and wondered if “Abram weren’t later than usual,” though she knew right well he was punctual as clock-work,—­good clock-work too,—­when he was going to his toil or hurrying back to his home.