Every day at noon they pass. He in a brushed suit and a gray hat, never collarless nor tieless, she in a neat cotton print dress and a sunbonnet. I have seen her any number of times, sitting and rocking upon wood porches before the crude, shabby cottages among my own hills of Mississippi.
They are at least sixty. He is blind and his gait is halting and brittle. Talking in a steady stream, gesturing with her knotty hand, she leads him daily to the cathedral to beg; at sunset she returns for him and takes him home. I had not seen her face until Spratling from the balcony called to her. She looked to both sides and then behind her without discovering us. At Spratling’s second call she looked up.
Her face is brown, and timesless and merry as a gnome’s and toothless: her nose and chin know each other.
-Faulkner, from New Orleans Sketches