That evening, as soon as it was dark, I could not help going round by
the old boarding-house. The "gahs" was lighted, but the curtains, or,
more properly, the painted shades, were not down. And so I stood there
and looked in along the table where the boarders sat at the evening
meal,--our old breakfast-table, which some of us feel as if we knew so
well. There were new faces at it, but also old and familiar ones.--The
land-lady, in a wonderfully smart cap, looking young, comparatively
speaking, and as if half the wrinkles had been ironed out of her
forehead.--Her daughter, in rather dressy half-mourning, with a vast
brooch of jet, got up, apparently, to match the gentleman next her, who
was in black costume and sandy hair,--the last rising straight from his
forehead, like the marble flame one sometimes sees at the top of a
funeral urn.--The poor relation, not in absolute black, but in a stuff
with specks of white; as much as to say, that, if there were any more
Hirams left to sigh for her, there were pin-holes in the night of her
despair, through which a ray of hope might find its way to--an
adorer.
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