The stories were old to her, except as she found a new listener to them, and they had never had any vital interest for her.

They had simply made her imagination twang pleasantly, and now they could hardly stir the old vibrations.
It seemed sometimes as if their hard story must finally grow old, and lose its bitter savor to Charlotte and Barney themselves.

Sometimes Charlotte's mother looked at her inquiringly and said to herself, "I don't believe she ever thinks about it now." She told Cephas so, and the old man nodded.

"She's a fool if she does," he returned, gruffly.
Cephas had never told anybody how he had gone once to Barney Thayer's door, and there stood long and delivered himself of a strange harangue, wherein the penitence and desire for peace had been thinly veiled by a half-wild and eccentric philosophy; but the gist of which had been the humble craving for pardon of an old man, and his beseeching that his daughter's lover, separated from her by his own fault, should forget it and come back to her.
"I haven't got anything to say about it," Barney had replied, and the old man had seemed to experience a sudden shock and rebound, as from the unexpected face of a rock in his path.
However, he still hoped that Barney would relent and come.

The next Sunday evening he had himself laid the parlor fire all ready for lighting, and hinted that Charlotte should change her dress.