Mrs. West approved the suggestion. "I brought my black serge," she explained, "to have you see if it'll pay for a regular making-over--new lining and all--or whether I'd better freshen it up and get all the wear I can out of it, just as 'tis. But I declare! With all that noise over my head, I wouldn't know a Dutch neck from a placket-hole. I don't see how you stand it, Persis, day in and day out." "There's lots in getting used to things," Persis explained, and left the room with the buoyant step of a girl. She looked every one of her six and thirty years, but her movements still retained the ardent lightness of youth. Beaten people drag through life. Only the unconquered move as Persis moved, as though shod with wings. The anvil chorus ceased abruptly when Persis opened the door of her brother's room. She entered with caution for the darkness seemed impenetrable, after the sunny brightness of the spring afternoon. Joel Dale's latest contribution to hygienic science was the discovery that sunshine was poison to his constitution. Not only were the shutters closed, and the shades drawn, but a patch-work bed-quilt had been tacked over the window that no obtrusive ray of light should work havoc with his health. Joel's voice was hoarsely tragic as he called to his sister to shut the door. "I'm going to as soon as I can find my way to the knob. It's so pitch-dark in here that I'm as blind as an owl till I get used to it." "Maybe 'twould help your eye-sight if you was the one getting poisoned," Joel returned sarcastically in the querulous tones of the confirmed invalid. "I've 'suffered the pangs of three several deaths,' as Shakespeare says, because you left the door part way open the last time you went to the 'cyclopedia." For twenty years Joel had been an omnivorous reader, and his speech bristled with quotations gathered from his favorite volumes, and generally tagged with the author's name. The quotations were not always apt, but they helped to confirm the village of Clematis in the conviction that Joel Dale was an intellectual man. By the time Persis had groped her way to the bed, she was sufficiently accustomed to the dim light to be able to distinguish her brother's restless eyes gleaming feverishly in the pallid blur of his face. "What do you want now, Joel?" she asked, with the mechanical gentleness of overtaxed patience. "Persis, there's a text o' Scripture that's weighing on my mind. I can't exactly place it, and I've got to know the context before I can figure out its meaning. 'Be not righteous over-much, neither make thyself over-wise. Why shouldst thou destroy thyself?' That's the way it runs, as near as I can remember. Now if righteousness is a good thing and wisdom too, why on earth--"