His frankness and simple courtesy overcame the embarrassment left
by my guide's introduction, and I followed him passively as he
entered the neat, but plainly-furnished sitting-room. At the same
moment a pretty, but faded young woman arose from the sofa and was
introduced to me as his daughter. "Fanny and I live here quite
alone, and if you knew how good it was to see somebody from the
great outside world now and then, you would not apologize for what
you call your intrusion."
During this speech I was vaguely trying to recall where and when
and under what circumstances I had ever before seen the village,
the house, the old man or his daughter. Was it in a dream, or in
one of those dim reveries of some previous existence to which the
spirit of mankind is subject? I looked at them again. In the
careworn lines around the once pretty girlish mouth of the young
woman, in the furrowed seams over the forehead of the old man, in
the ticking of the old-fashioned clock on the shelf, in the faint
whisper of the falling snow outside, I read the legend, "Patience,
patience; Wait and Hope.
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