We must have enjoyed a kind of prosperity, I suppose, for we seem always to have been planning or doing something to enlarge the house or improve its surroundings, and quite a good deal of money can be spent in that way. I think it was about the second year that for the sake of light and air we let out three dormer windows on the long roof, and I remember that in order not to make a mistake in their architecture we drove thirty miles one morning to see a house like ours which had owned its windows from the beginning. We loved our old house, you see, and did not wish to do it an injury. I think it was about the same time that we pulled off the plaster from the living-room ceiling and left the exposed beams--old hewn timbers which we tinted down with a dull stain. William Deegan and I stained those beams together, and our friendship ripened during that employment. William had been with us about a year at this period--not steadily, because now and then would come a day when with sadness and averted eyes he would say, "I think I'll be goin' now, for a little while," after which the effacement of William for perhaps a week, followed by his return some morning, pale, delapidated, as on the morning of his first arrival. In the beginning I had argued, even remonstrated, but without effect. William only said, humbly: "It comes over me to be goin', and I have to do it. I'll be dacent ag'in, whin I get back." During one such period of absence there came a telephone call from the sheriff of the nearest town of size. "Do you know a man named William Deegan?" "We do." "He is in the calaboose here. His fine and costs amount to five dollars. Do you want to redeem him?" "We do." Clearly William's vacation had been unusual, even for him. We sent up the money and William was home that night, more crushed, more pale, more dilapidated than ever. He had worn a new suit away. He returned with a mere rag. We thought this might cure him, but nothing could do that. We could redeem William, but he could not redeem himself. These occasional lapses were the only drawback of that faithful, industrious soul, and we let them go. We had been unable to forgive them in the light-headed, literary Gibbs. But William here is a digression; I was speaking of our improvements. We decided one year that we must have more flowers--a real garden. We made it on the side of the house where before had been open field--walled in a space where there was an apple-tree, a place large enough to assemble all the things we loved most and that grew with an economy of care. In a little while it was a glorious tangle that we admired exceedingly, and that our artist friends tried to paint.