BY MARY S. WATTS From _Harper’s_ Guiding the possible tenant about the house, Miss Wilcox pointed out its desirable features in a dry little monotone that gave no hint, she hoped, of her inward taut anxiety. She could not have achieved the persuasive enthusiasm of the young man from the real-estate office even if she had thought it becoming to a gentlewoman. Apparently he could see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil; there was something abnormal about his incapacities; he was magnificent, but at moments Miss Martha feared that he was not strictly conscientious. And besides, to what end shutting his eyes and thereby perhaps influencing others to shut theirs against unhappy facts? Truth will out. The house _was_ old; the floors _did_ need refinishing: the front-parlour fireplace _did_ smoke---- “Them ceilings sure are high!” ejaculated the possible tenant, cocking a measuring eye heavenward. “Y-yes, they _are_ high,” Miss Martha admitted helplessly. At this familiar--and perfectly just--criticism the agent always burst into flaming eulogies of high ceilings. Just the thing for our summer climate, our super-heated furnaces in winter! Tell you, the old-timers knew how to build for comfort! Miss Martha shrank from conjecturing what he said when ceilings were low. This whole experience illuminated depressingly the practice current in what it was the modern shibboleth to call “big business,” she thought. “Well, eight-five per is a whole lotta money,” said the possible tenant. She gazed round indifferently as they stepped out on the little side porch; then all at once her expression altered with surprise and interest. She clutched Miss Wilcox’s arm, holding her back with an energetic whisper of warning. “Sh-h! See that bird? See him? Washing himself in that old pedestal washstand somebody’s left out there? If that ain’t the cutest thing! He’s just sloshin’ right in like a person, you ’r I ’r anybody. Like it was put there just on purpose for him!” “Why, it was. It’s a birds’ bath, you know,” said Miss Martha, somewhat startled, fumbling for her eyeglasses; the pretty spectacle was no novelty to her, yet it never lost its charm. “Oh, that’s one of the thrushes. They must have a nest somewhere near----”