“It will be unawares, my dear,--very much unawares,--when I shelter any angels of that sort.” “Oh, you wouldn't turn him out, such weather as this?” “The house is not mine, in the first place,” Mrs. Bogardus explained as to a child. “I can't entertain tramps or even angels on my son's premises, when he's away.” “Oh, he! He would build the fires himself, and make up their beds,” laughed Miss Sallie. “If he were here, I believe he would start down there now, and stock the place with everything you've got in the house to eat.” “I hope he'd leave us a little something for breakfast,” said Mrs. Bogardus a trifle coldly. But she did not mention the cause of her uneasiness about this particular visitor. She never defended herself. Miss Sallie was delighted with her callousness to the sentimental rebuke which had been rather rubbed in. It was so unmodern; one got so weary of fashionable philanthropy, women who talked of their social sympathies and their principles in life. She almost hoped that Mrs. Bogardus had neither. Certainly she never mentioned them. “What did she say? Did she tell you what I said to her last night?” Cerissa questioned her husband feverishly after his interview with Mrs. Bogardus. “She didn't mention your name,” Chauncey took some pleasure in stating. “If you hadn't told me yourself, I shouldn't have known you'd meddled in it at all.” “What's she going to do about it?” “How crazy you women are! 'Cause some poor old Sooner-die-than-work warms his bones by a bit of fire that wouldn't scare a chimbly swaller out of its nest! Don't you s'pose if there'd been any fire there to speak of, I'd 'a' seen it? What am I here for? Now I've got to drop everything, and git a padlock on that door, and lock it up every night, and search the whole place from top to bottom for fear there's some one in there hidin' in a rathole!” “Chauncey! If you've got to do that I don't want you to go in there alone. You take one of the men with you; and you better have a pistol or one of the dogs anyhow. Suppose you was to ketch some one in there, and corner him! He might turn on you, and shoot you!” “I wish you wouldn't work yourself up so about nothin' at all! Want me to make a blame jackass of myself raisin' the whole place about a potato-peel or a bacon-rind!” “I think you might have some little regard for my feelings,” Cerissa whimpered. “If you ain't afraid, I'm afraid for you; and I don't see anything to be ashamed of either. I wish you _wouldn't_ go _alone_ searching through that spooky old place. It just puts me beside myself to think of it!” “Well, well! That's enough about it anyhow. I ain't going to do anything foolish, and you needn't think no more about it.”