The doctor moved a barrel-hoop which fastened the gate, and it tottered over, and clung by one hinge to the worm-eaten post, from which the decaying fence had fallen away. A hall ran through the house, and on either side were two rooms. The second floor was a duplicate of the first, so that the house contained eight small rooms, nine by eleven feet, exactly alike, each with a huge fireplace. There was not a pantry, a closet, a clothes-press, a shelf in the house. Not a room was papered: all were covered with a coarse whitewash, smoked, fly-specked and momently falling in great scales. The floors were rough, knotty and warped; the wash-boards were rat-gnawed in every direction; all the woodwork was unpainted and gray with age. Two beds and a kitchen stove had been set up on the bare floors. On a pine table in the cramped kitchen were a few dishes, tins and pails, a loaf of bread, a ham, some coffee and sugar. Mrs. Lively sat down in the kitchen on a wooden chair with a feeling of utter desolation in her heart. Napoleon looked longingly at the loaf of bread. The doctor flew round in a way that would have cheered anybody not foregone to despondency. He brought in some cobs from the yard and kindled a fire in the stove, filled the tea-kettle, and put some slices of ham to fry and some coffee to boil. "Go up stairs, dear," he said to Mrs. Lively, "and lie down while I get supper ready. You are tired: I feel as smart as a new whip. I haven't been a soldier for nothing: I'll give you some of the best coffee you ever drank. Nappy, run across the street and see if you can't get a cup of milk: I see the people have a cow. Won't you lie down?" he continued to his wife. She looked so ineffably wretched that his heart ached for her. "I think I shall feel better if I do something," she said drearily; "but," she continued, firing with something of her old spirit, "how in the world is anybody to do anything here? Not even a dishcloth!" "Oh, never mind," laughed the doctor, piling the dusty dishes in a pan for washing, "we'll just set the crockery up in this cullender to drain dry." "We'd better turn hermits, go and winter in a cave, and be done with it. How are we ever to live?"