The epistle was almost tattered with many readings when Hetty became an inmate of her brother-in-law’s home. She had not kept it until now. That was not strange, Fairhill being the latest in a succession of “settlements” to which the brilliant gospeler had accepted calls, generally unanimous and almost invariably enthusiastic. There were three children at Hetty’s coming—her own and her mother’s namesake, Hester, and Percy and Perry, the twin boys. Four had been born since, but two had not outlived early infancy. Mr. Wayt would not have been a preacher of the period had he not enriched some of his most effective discourses with illustrations drawn from these personal bereavements. His celebrated apostrophe to a six-months old daughter, beginning—“Dear little Susie! She had numbered but a brief half year of mortal life, but she was loving and beloved! I seem to feel the soft strain of her arms about my neck this moment”—is too familiar to my readers, through newspaper reports, to need repetition here. The sermon embodying this gem of poetic and rhetorical emotion is known to have won him calls to three churches. It was still dark when Hetty’s ear caught the muffled thud of feet upon the garret stairs. Wherever providence and parish preferences cast the lot of the Wayts, Homer’s bedroom was nearest the heavens that were hot by summer and cold by winter. “I don’t set no store by ceilin’s,” he told Hetty when she “wished they could lodge him better.” “Seems if ’twas naturaler fur to see the beams purty nigh onto my nose when I fus’ wake in the mornin’. I’m kind o’ lonesome fur ’em when I caan’t butt me head agin the top o’ me room when I’m a mind ter.” At another time he confided to her that it was “reel sociabul-like to hear the rain onto the ruff, clus’ to a feller’s ears o’ nights.” He was on his way down to the kitchen now to light the fire. Unless she should interfere, he would cook breakfast, and serve it upon the table she had set overnight, and sweep down the stairs and scrub the front doorsteps while the family ate the morning meal. He called himself “Tony,” as did all the family except Hetty and Mrs. Wayt. The former had found “Homer Smith, Jr.,” written in a sprawling hand upon the flyleaf of a songbook which formed the waif’s entire library. Hetty had notions native to her own small head. One was that the—but for her—friendless lad would respect himself the more if he were not addressed by what she called “a circus monkey’s name.” For this reason he was “Homer” to her, and her sister followed her example because she considered the factotum and whatever related to him Hetty’s affair, and that she had a right to designate her chattel by whatever title she pleased.