Old Sunshine by Francis Hopkinson Smith — Read

It was when pulling in his milk one morning that Dalny first made the acquaintance of "Old Sunshine. " The cans had become mixed, Dalny's pint having been laid at the old man's door and the old man's gill at Dalny's, and the rectifying of the mistake -- "Old Sunshine" did the rectifying -- laid the basis of the acquaintance.

Everybody, of course, in the Studio Building knew the old man and his old sister by sight, but only one or two well enough to speak to him; none of them to speak to the poor, faded woman, who would climb the stairs so many times a day, always stopping for her breath at the landing, and always with some little package -- a pinch of tea, or a loaf of bread, or fragment of chop -- which she hid under her apron if she heard anyone's steps. She was younger than her brother by a few years, but there was no mistaking their relationship; their noses were exactly alike -- long, semi-transparent noses, protruding between two wistful, china-blue eyes peering from under eyebrows shaded by soft gray hair.