They sat talking on the verandah in the close of the May evening, Mr and Mrs Murchison.

The Plummer Place was the Murchison Place in the town's mouth now, and that was only fair; the Murchisons had overstamped the Plummers.

It lay about them like a map of their lives: the big horse chestnut stood again in flower to lighten the spring dusk for them, as it had done faithfully for thirty years.

John was no longer in his shirt-sleeves; the growing authority of his family had long prescribed a black alpaca coat.

He smoked his meerschaum with the same old deliberation, however, holding it by the bowl as considerately as he held its original, which lasted him fifteen years.