It was her youth that was wonderful, and now she was grown old.

She recognized that the street was the same, and that she had changed--that the world is for ever beginning for some and ending for others.
It was nearly midnight, and, with a shiver, she pulled the shawl over her shoulders and took a last look at the street before she went to bed.

Thirty years ago since she came to live in it, when half the street was an open paddock! If Jim could see it now he wouldn't know it! The thought brought the vision of him before her eyes.

She was an old woman now, but in her mind's eye he remained for ever young and for ever joyous, the smart workman in a grey cap, with the brown moustache and laughing eyes, who was nobody's enemy but his own.

Something within her had snapped when he died, and she had remained on the defensive against life, expecting nothing, surprised at nothing, content to sit out the performance like a spectator at the play.
She thought of to-morrow, and decided to pay a surprise visit to the Silver Shoe before the people set out for church.