They had a charming little dinner by themselves to the tune of the rain outside, and were having their coffee by the drawing-room fire; and Miss Sallie was thinking by what phrase one could do justice to the massive, crass ugliness of that self-satisfied apartment, furnished in the hideous sixties, when the word was sent in that Mrs. Dunlop wished to speak with Mrs. Bogardus. Something of Cerissa's injured importance survived the transmission of the message, causing Mrs. Bogardus to smile to herself as she rose. Cerissa was waiting in the dining-room. She kept her seat as Mrs. Bogardus entered. Her eyes did not rise higher than the lady's dress, which she examined with a fierce intentness of comparison while she opened her errand. “I thought you'd like to know you've got a strange lodger down to the old house. I don't seem to ever get moved!” she enlarged. “I'm always runnin' down there after first one thing 'n' another we've forgot. This morning 't was my stone batter-pot. Chauncey said he thought it was getting cold enough for buckwheat cakes. I don't suppose you want to have stray tramps in there in the old house, building fires in the loom-room, where, if a spark got loose, it would blaze up them draughty stairs, and the whole house would go in a minute.” Cerissa stopped to gain breath. “Making fires? Are you sure of that? Has any smoke been seen coming out of that chimney?” “Why, it's been raining so! And the trees have got so tall! But I could show you the shucks an' shells he's left there. I know how we left it!” “You had better speak--No; I will see Chauncey in the morning.” Mrs. Bogardus never, if she could avoid it, gave an order through a third person. “Well, I thought I'd just step in. Chauncey said 't was no use disturbing you to-night, but he's just that way--so easy about everything! I thought you wouldn't want to be harboring tramps this wet weather when most anybody would be tempted to build a fire. I'm more concerned about what goes on down there now we're _out_ of the house! I seem to have it on my mind the whole time. A house is just like a child: the more you don't see it the more you worry about it.” “I'm glad you have such a home feeling about the place,” said Mrs. Bogardus, avoiding the onset of words. “Well, good-evening, Cerissa. Thank you for your trouble. I will see about it in the morning.” Mrs. Bogardus mentioned what she had just heard to Miss Sallie, who remarked, with her keen sense of antithesis, what a contrast _that_ fireside must be to _this_. “Which fireside?” “Oh, your lodger upon the cold ground,--making his little bit of a stolen blaze in that cavern of a chimney in the midst of the wet trees! What a nice thing to have an unwatched place like that where a poor bird of passage can creep in and make his nest, and not trouble any one. Think what Jean Valjeans one might shelter”-- “Who?” “What 'angels unawares.'”