“Of all things the most stoggy and hopelessly uninviting,” interrupted his wife. “No, Ezra, I won’t have any of the people out here think I am a little fool that can’t do any useful work. I have my pride as well as other folks. I shall cook your breakfast to-morrow and every day afterwards, and I shall cook it well, see if I don’t.” “I am sure of that,” said her husband with the confidence of a bridegroom. The house of which the young bride had just taken possession was by no means an ordinary prairie house. Far from it. It had pretensions to comfort which the true prairie house should never possess, and it lacked the few elements of picturesqueness with which the genuine article is sometimes endowed. The plan on which it was built was of the simplest—the same that children adopt in building their doll’s houses—four sides and a sloping roof, all of wood from top to bottom. It was not a log-house, which has a few broken lines to rest the eye of the beholder and present possibilities to the artist, it was a frame house, that is, the straightest, stiffest, squarest, most hopelessly unpicturesque object that it is possible to imagine, and to make matters worse it was painted a glaring white from eave to foundation. There was not a broken line or a broken tint anywhere to refresh the eye, and it stood on the high prairie, as if hurled into a glaring world by a Titan’s hand. The prairie is fertile, and in the eye of a farmer may possess the beauty of usefulness, but otherwise it is hideous. The long rolling billows of grass present no character, while the trees are confined to the river valleys where they find refuge from prairie fires, and can therefore lead a sufficiently undisturbed existence to reach quite a respectable height. A couple of small locust trees, not three feet high, were all that did duty as shade-giving plants near Olive’s house, which accordingly faced the world and its storms entirely on its own individual merits. Judged by prairie standard the house was “tip-top.” It possessed no less than four rooms, while the regular settler’s cabin was wont to indulge in only a single comprehensive apartment, which was kitchen, parlour and bedroom all in one. The two lower rooms were the kitchen, which was fairly large, and a smaller one off it, reserved for the private use of the young wife. The kitchen looked like a ship’s cabin, only that it had more light than usually penetrates into a ship’s cabin. In fact it was very light, for there were two large windows, one to the north and one to the south, geometrically opposite each other. These two windows, so exactly facing each other, were fairly typical of the house itself, which was the embodiment of mathematical accuracy. The building was placed exactly east and west, as if it had been a carefully oriented church. There was a door on the south side, exactly in the middle, and a window on either side of the door, placed accurately in