“I shouldn’t wonder if Mrs. Deacon Whittle would furnish up her best parlor something elegant,” surmised Mrs. Dodge. “She’s always said she was goin’ to have gilt paper and marble tops and electric blue plush upholstered furniture. I guess that’ll be the last fair we’ll ever have in that house. She wouldn’t have everybody trampin’ over her flowered Body-Brussels. I suppose _we_ might buy some plush furniture; but I don’t know as I’d care for electric blue. What do you think, son?” Jim Dodge sat sprawled out in his chair before the half-set table. At this picture of magnificence, about to be realized in the abode of Deacon Amos Whittle, he gave vent to an inarticulate growl. “What’s the matter with you, Jim?” shrilled his mother, whose perpetually jangled nerves were capable of strange dissonances. “Anybody’d suppose you wasn’t pleased at having the old Bolton place sold at last, and a little bit of all that’s been owing to us since before your poor father died, paid off. My! If we was to have all that was coming to us by rights, with the interest money—” “I’m hungry and tired, mother, and I want my dinner,” said Jim brusquely. “That check won’t hoe the potatoes; so I guess I’ll have to do it, same as usual.” “For pity sake, Fanny!” cried his mother, “did you put the vegetables over to boil? I ain’t thought of anything since this check came.” It appeared that Fanny had been less forgetful. After his belated dinner, Jim had gone back to his potatoes, leaving his mother and sister deep in discussion over the comparative virtues of Nottingham lace and plain muslin, made up with ruffles, for parlor curtains. “I really believe I’d rather spend more on the house than on clo’es at my age,” he heard his mother saying, happily, as he strode away. All during the afternoon, to the clink of myriad small stones against the busy blade of his hoe, Jim thought about Lydia Orr. He could not help seeing that it was to Lydia he owed the prospect of a much needed suit of clothes. It would be Lydia who hung curtains, of whatever sort, in their shabby best room. And no other than Lydia was to furnish Mrs. Whittle’s empty parlor. She had already given the minister a new long-tailed coat, as Jim chose to characterize the ministerial black. His cheeks burned under the slanting rays of the afternoon sun with something deeper than an added coat of tan. Why should Lydia Orr—that slip of a girl, with the eyes of a baby, or a saint—do all this? Jim found himself unable to believe that she really wanted the Bolton place. Why, the house was an uninhabitable ruin! It would cost thousands of dollars to rebuild it.