"Your word's law, I s'pose," said Caleb, locking the front door, "but--" "'But me no buts,'" Grace said, taking his hand and making a true "home run." Caleb seated himself awkwardly, looked around him, and said:-- "Hope you asked a blessin' on all this?" "I never ate a meal without one," Philip replied. "Reckon you'll get along, then," said Caleb, looking relieved and engulfing half of a tea-biscuit. V--BUSINESS WAYS PHILIP engaged a plumber from the nearest city and had one of his upper chambers transformed into a bath-room, and Caleb, by special permission, studied every detail of the work and went into so brown a study of the general subject that Philip informed Grace that either the malarial soaking, mentioned in Uncle Jethro's letter, had reached the point of saturation, or that the Confederate bullet had found a new byway in its meanderings. But Caleb was not conscious of anything out of the usual--except the bath-room. By dint of curiosity and indirect questioning he learned that in New York Philip and his wife had bathed daily. Afterward he talked bathing with the occasional commercial travellers who reached Claybanks--men who seemed "well set up," despite some distinct signs of bad habits, and learned that men of affairs in the great city thought bathing quite as necessary as eating. He talked to Doctor Taggess on the subject, and was told in reply that, in the Doctor's opinion, cleanliness was not only next to godliness, but frequently an absolute prerequisite to cleanly longings and a clean life. So one day, after a fortnight of self-abstraction, he announced to Philip that a bath-room ought to be regarded as a means of grace. "Quite so," assented Philip, "but I wish it weren't so expensive at the start. Do you know what that bath-room, with its tank, pump, drain, etc., has cost? The bill amounts to about a hundred and fifty dollars, and it can't be charged to my account for six months, like most of our purchases for the store." "That so?" drawled Caleb, carelessly, though in his heart he was delighted; for Philip had also engaged from the city a paper-hanger, and he had employed a local painter to do a lot of work; and Caleb, who knew the business ways of country stores, had trembled for the bills, yet doubted his right to speak of them. "Well, have you got the money to pay for it?" "Yes, but not much more; and in the two weeks I've been here the store has taken in about forty dollars in cash."