In this window was an old-fashioned rocking-chair cushioned softly with faded, rose-patterned chintz, and before it stood always a small footstool covered with dim-brown canvas on which was a wreath of roses done in cross-stitch by his mother in her girlhood.  Anderson loved to see Charlotte sitting in this chair with her feet on the footstool, her pretty head leaning back against the faded roses of the chintz, the delicate curve of her cheek towards him, as she swayed gently back and forth and seemed to gaze peacefully out of the window at the hollyhocks blooming against the green hill.  It was characteristic of the man’s dreams that the girl’s face in them was turned a little from him.  She never saw him when he entered, she never broke the sweet silence of her own dreams within dreams, for him, and he never, even in dreams, touched the soft curve of that averted cheek, or even one of the little hands lying as lightly as flowers in her muslin lap.  Anderson, the commonplace man in the grocery business, in the commonplace present, dreamed as reverently and spiritually of the lady of his love as Dante of his Beatrice, or Petrarch of his Laura.  He would go down to the grave with his songs all unsung; but the man was a poet, as are all who worship the god, and not the likeness of themselves in him.  As Anderson sat on the porch that summer night, to his fancy Charlotte Carroll sat on the step above him.  Without fairly looking he could see the sweep of her white draperies and the mild fairness, producing the effect of luminosity, of her face in the dusk.

Then suddenly Charlotte herself dispelled the illusion.  She passed by with her sister Ina and a young man.  Anderson heard the low, sweet babble of girls’ tongues and a hearty, boyish laugh before they came opposite the porch.  He knew at once that Charlotte was one of the girls.  He could not see them very plainly when they passed, for the moon had not yet risen and the shadows of the trees were dense.  He had glimpses of pale contours and ruffling white draperies floating around the young man, who walked on the outside.  He towered above them both with stately tenderness.  He was smoking, and Anderson noted that with a throb of anger.  He had an old-fashioned conviction that a man should not smoke when walking with ladies.  He was sitting perfectly motionless when they came alongside, and all at once one of the girls, Ina, the eldest, perceived him, and started violently with an exclamation.  All three laughed, and the young man said, raising his hat, “Good-evening, Mr. Anderson.”

Anderson returned the salutation.  He thought, but was not quite sure, that Charlotte nodded.  He heard, quite distinctly, Ina remark, when they were scarcely past, in a voice of girlish scorn and merry ridicule: 

“Is the grocer a friend of yours, Mr. Eastman?”

Anderson was sure that he heard a “Hush! he will hear you!” from Charlotte, before young Frank Eastman replied, like a man: