sold the shop, and with whom he now boarded, was standing at the open door beside the windowful of clocks. “Why, Mr. Philip!” she said, in a tone of diffident remonstrance, “ain’t it almost a bit too damp for you to get your walk to-day?” But old Philippe merely raised his hat, and stalked on past her. He did not like to be interfered with by people who had not the right—and who had? Mrs. Watchmaker Brown, for her part, looked after him with a mixture of feelings, as he took his way, rather waveringly, up the street. She was a kindly-hearted woman, but he was a “proud,” unsociable old man. He did look really very feeble. She could hardly help thinking that, if “anything should happen”. . . why, after all, it would be nice to have the whole house to themselves.
Poor “proud” Philippe! The air, as it blew in, sweet and fresh from the sea, gathered more sweetness yet from the blossomed gardens that divided the painted houses; Mrs. Selincourt’s wallflowers breathed so strong that even he could smell them; the sunshine soothed with a delicious warmth his withered, sunken cheek—it was spring, yes: but Philippe did not look much like spring. His bent and lean old figure, his cadaverous, pale face, spoke far more plainly of the end of things than of any fresh beginning. All the winter through, old Philippe had been ill. It was only within the last few days that he had been able to put on his queer “outlandish” shoes and get outside at all; and that famous cherry-wood stick of his, with the curling handle and the edelweiss-flower carved on it, really needed now to be what Bossu had in jest been wont to call it—“The old man’s third leg.”
