"I thought you would be," she agreed, too gravely for his complete comfort, when she had accomplished the readjustment of the wick to her entire satisfaction. "For, you know, you seemed a little worried and--well, not just happy, yesterday, when I told you I was going to move I--I felt sure you would be glad to find that I hadn't gone far!" Old Jerry remembered at that moment and he removed his soaked hat. He turned, too, and drew up a chair. It gave him an opportunity to avoid those moistly mirthful eyes for a moment. Seated and comfortably tilted back against the wall he felt less ill at ease--felt better able to deal with the situation as it should be dealt with. For a moment her presence there had only confounded him--that was when the wave of righteous wrath had swept him--but at the worst he had counted it nothing more than a too far-fetched bit of fantastic mischief conceived to tantalize him. Her last statement awakened in him a preposterously impossible suspicion which, now that he had a chance to glance about the room, was confirmed instantly--absolutely. It was astounding--utterly unbelievable--and yet on all the walls, in every corner, there were the indisputable evidences of her intention to remain indefinitely--permanently. At least it gave him an opening. "You don't mean to say," he began challengingly, "you don't mean to tell me that you're a-figurin' on stayin' here--for good?" She pursed her lips and nodded vigorously at him until the loosened wisps of hair half hid her eyes. It was quite as though she were pleased beyond belief that he had got at the gist of it all so speedily. "Yes, for good," she explained ecstatically, "or," more slowly, "or at least for quite a while. You see I like it here! It's just like home already--just like I always imagined home would be when I really had one, anyway. There's so much room--and it's warm, too. And then, the floors don't squeak, either. I don't think I care for squeaky floors--do you?" A quick widening of those almost purple eyes accompanied the last question. The little white-haired figure in the back-tilted chair snorted. He tried to disguise it behind a belated cough, but it was quite palpably a snort of outraged patience and dignity. She couldn't fool him any longer--not even with that wide-eyed appealingly infantile stare. He knew, without looking closer, that there was a flare of mirth hidden within its velvet duskiness. And there was only one way to deal with such shallowness--that was with firm and unmistakable severity. He leaned forward and pounded one meager knee for emphasis as Judge Maynard had often done.