"
The young woman stretched out a hand, and laid it on the clasped hands
of the old man. He sat gazing into the past. She was silent for a
while; and in her eyes, still fixed intently on his face, there were
tears.
"Grand-papa dear"--but there were tears in her voice, too.
"My child, you don't understand. If I had needed pity--"
"I do understand--so well. I wasn't pitying you, dear, I was envying
you a little."
"Me?--an old man with only the remembrance of happiness?"
"You, who have had happiness granted to you. That isn't what made me
cry, though. I cried because I was glad. You and I, with all this
great span of years between us, and yet--so wonderfully alike! I had
always thought of myself as a creature utterly apart."
"Ah, that is how all young people think of themselves. It wears off.
Tell me about this wonderful resemblance of ours."
He sat attentive while she described her heart to him. But when, at
the close of her confidences, she said, "So you see it's a case of
sheer heredity, grand-papa," the word "Fiddlesticks!" would out.
"Forgive me, my dear," he said, patting her hand. "I was very much
interested. But I do believe young people are even more staggered by
themselves than they were in my day.
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