This sum, which was not an inconsiderable one for those days, enabled the clergyman to rent as a parsonage the old house we have seen, with the big brazen knocker, and diamond lights in either half of its green door. It stood under the shade of two huge ashes, at a little remove back from the street, and within easy walk from the central common. A heavy dentilated cornice, from which the paint was peeling away in flaky patches, hung over the windows of the second floor. Within the door was a little entry--(for years and years the pastor's hat and cane used to lie upon a table that stood just within the door); from the entry a cramped stairway, by three sharp angles, led to the floor above. To the right and left were two low parlors. The sun was shining broadly in the south one when the couple first entered the house. "Good!" said Rachel, with her pleasant, brisk tone,--"this shall be your study, Benjamin; the bookcase here, the table there, a nice warm carpet, we'll paper it with blue, the Major's sword shall be hung over the mantel." "Tut! tut!" says the clergyman, "a sword, Rachel,--in my study?" "To be sure! why not?" says Rachel. "And if you like, I will hang my picture, with the doves and the olive-branch, above it; and there shall be a shelf for hyacinths in the window." Thus she ran on in her pretty house-wifely manner, cooing like the doves she talked of, plotting the arrangement of the parlor opposite, of the long dining-room stretching athwart the house in the rear, and of the kitchen under a roof of its own, still farther back,--he all the while giving grave assent, as if he listened to her contrivance: he was only listening to the music of a sweet voice that somehow charmed his ear, and thanking God in his heart that such music was bestowed upon a sinful world, and praying that he might never listen too fondly. Behind the house were yard, garden, orchard, and this last drooping away to a meadow. Over all these the pair of light feet pattered beside the master. "Here shall be lilies," she said; "there, a great bunch of mother's peonies; and by the gate, hollyhocks";--he, by this time, plotting a sermon upon the vanities of the world. Yet in due time it came to pass that the parsonage was all arranged according to the fancies of its mistress,--even to the Major's sword and the twin doves. Esther, a stout middle-aged dame, and stanch Congregationalist, recommended by the good women of the parish, is installed in the kitchen as maid-of-all-work. As gardener, groom, (a sedate pony and square-topped chaise forming part of the establishment,) factotum, in short,--there is the frowzy-headed man Larkin, who has his quarters in an airy loft above the kitchen.