"Nonsense! Aren't we friends? If not, we're going to be. Besides, I really want some one to rejoice with me over the surprise I'm going to give my wife. Come right in. Drop the box on this table." "Well!" exclaimed Caleb, after a long suspiration, "I reckon I done that just in time! A second more, an' I'd ha' dropped the hull thing on this carpet--or is it a shawl? Why, 'taint the same place at all! Je-ru-salem! What would your Uncle Jethro say if he could look in a minute? Reckon he'd want to come back an' stay. I dunno's I ought to have said that, though, for I've always b'lieved he was among the saved, an' of course your house ain't better'n heaven, but--" "But 'twill be heaven to my wife and me," said Philip. "Well, I reckon homes was invented 'specially to prepare folks for heaven,--or t'other place, 'cordin' to the folks." "Come into the parlor," said Philip, toast and coffee in hand. For a moment or two Caleb stood speechless in the doorway; then he said:-- "Je-ru-salem! This reminds me to take off my hat. Why, I s'posed you folks wasn't over-an'-above well fixed in the city, but this is a palace!" "Not quite," said Philip, although delighted by Caleb's comments. "Thousands of quiet young couples in New York have prettier parlors than this." "I want to know!" Then Caleb sighed. "I reckon that's why young people that go there from the country never come home again. I've knowed a lot of 'em that I'd like to see once more. Hello! I reckon that's a pianner; I've seen pictures of 'em in advertisements. A firm in the city once wanted your uncle to take the county agency for pianners." Caleb laughed almost convulsively as he continued, "Ye ort to have seen Jethro's face when he read that letter!" "Do you mean to say that there are no pianos in this county?" asked Philip. "I just do. But there once was an organ. Squire Pease, out in Hick'ry Township, bought one two or three years ago for his gals. He was runnin' for sheriff then, an' thought somethin' so new an' startlin' might look like a sign of public spirit, an' draw him some votes. But somehow his gals didn't get the hang of it, an' the noises it made always set visitors' dogs to howlin', an' to tryin' to get into the house an' kill the varmint, whatever it was, an' Pease's dogs tried to down the visitors' dogs, an' that made bad feelin'; so Pease traded the organ to a pedler for a patent corn-planter, an' he didn't get 'lected sheriff, either. I allers reckoned that ef anybody'd knowed how to play on it, that organ might ha' been a means of grace in these parts, for I've knowed a nigger's fiddle to stop a drunken fight that was too much for the sheriff an' his posse." Caleb looked the piano over as if it were a horse on sale, and continued:-- "Don't seem to work with a crank."