"Very well; do so. I'll promise not to be jealous. He's certainly hearty, and 'tis good for us that he's honest; for we and all we have are practically in his hands and will remain there until I get a grip on the business. But I do wish Uncle Jethro hadn't been so enragingly non-committal about the chap's peculiarities. I shall be on pins and needles until I know what the old gentleman was hinting at. Besides, he may have been entirely mistaken. A mind that could imagine that this out-of-the-world hole-in-the-ground must one day become a city could scarcely have been entirely trustworthy about anything." III--INTRODUCED THE house in which the late Jethro Somerton had lived was a plain wooden structure, entered by a door opening directly into a room which had been used as a sitting room. Behind this was a kitchen, beside which was a bedroom, while in front, beside the sitting room, was a "best room" or parlor. There was a second floor, in which were four rooms, some of which had never been used. The ceilings throughout the house were so low that Philip, who was quite tall, could touch them with his finger-tips when he stood on tiptoe. The walls of the sitting room and parlor were hard-finished and white; all the other walls were rough and whitewashed. "This is quite out of the question, as a home," said Philip. "No hall, no--" "Why not make believe that the sitting room is a square hall?" Grace asked. "They're the rage in the swell villages around New York." "But there's no bath room." "We can make one, on the upper floor, where we've rooms to spare." "Perhaps; but 'tis very improbable that the town has a water service." "Then have a tank, fed from the roof or by a pump, as Aunt Eunice has in her cottage, smaller than this and in a town no larger than Claybanks." "No furnace, of course, to warm the house, and--ugh!--I don't believe the town knows of the existence of coal, for both stoves at the store are fed with wood." "So they were, and--oh, I see! Here are fireplaces in the sitting-room--or hall, I suppose I should say--and in the parlor! Think how unutterably we longed for the unattainable--that is, an open wood fire--in our little flat in the city!" "But, dear girl, a fireplace grows cold at night." "Quite likely; but don't you suppose the principal merchant in town could economize on something so as to afford enough quilts and blankets to keep his family from freezing to death while they sleep?" "You angel, you've all the brains of the family. Where did you learn so much about houses? And about what to do when you don't find what you want in them? And who taught you?" "I suppose necessity taught me," Grace replied, with a laugh, "and within the past few minutes, too. For, don't you see, we must live in this house. There seems to be no other place for us. And I suppose 'tis instinct for women, rather than men, to see the possibilities of houses, for a woman has to spend most of her life indoors."