“What a dear little house! It is just like a toy! And do look at the saws hanging on the walls beside the covers of the pots! Oh, won’t it be so nice and free living here! I shall feel like an explorer in a far country. And how funny to have nail-kegs for seats, and oh, you dear old darling!” Olive jumped up and kissed her big husband. “Things are rough now, dearie,” he said with infinite tenderness, looking at her with loving admiration, “but by and by we shall have everything very nice.” “But I think it is just as nice as it can be now.” “This is our room,” said he, opening a door to the right. “Why, if you haven’t gone and got a rocking-chair!” exclaimed Olive, glancing around the small apartment. “I made it for you myself in spare time,” answered Ezra, pleased that she had noticed the chair the first thing: he had often wondered, when working at that rocking-chair, whether she would be pleased with it. “You see,” he continued, “we have to work only five days a week for the Community. All the rest of our time is at our own disposal, and by and by, when we are flourishing, four days for the Community will suffice.” “Do you like working for other people and not being paid?” asked Olive. “I do not consider it as working for other people without pay,” replied her husband, with some quickness. “We each work for the general good, and if I happen to plant corn that someone else will eat, then some other member of the Community raises potatoes that I shall eat.” “There, there, don’t be cross,” said the little wife, noting the flush that had risen to his brow as he spoke. “I am sure it is nice, and I shall like it when I understand it all. At any rate we shall be very happy whatever happens, and I like my dear little house, and please, I am very thirsty, can I have a drink?” He brought her some water in a tin dipper with a long handle, and she did not make a face, but drank the water gratefully. She determined in her own mind, however, to have a glass tumbler the very next day, but she was new to the prairie, and she did not get the tumbler the next day, nor the next week, nor for many, many long months. “What time are we to have breakfast?” she asked, when taking over the household from Napoleon Pompey and Diana, who had run the establishment while her husband had been to fetch her from Ohio. “Yo’ kin eat when yo’ like,” said Napoleon Pompey, desiring to be all that was polite to his new mistress. “But I want to know what time you have breakfast?” repeated Olive with persistence. “We uns got ter be hout on der lan’ ploughin’ afore sun-up,” said Napoleon Pompey concisely. “Dear me! Why, that is before six o’clock!” exclaimed Olive. “I calkerlate,” said Napoleon Pompey affably. Ezra did not want Olive to think she was bound to get up and prepare the working-man’s breakfast. “You are not used to that sort of hard work, dearie. We can do very well with cold corn-bread.”