“I'll have to think about it first;--let you know in the morning.” XXI INJURIOUS REPORTS CONCERNING AN OLD HOUSE A Rush of wheels and a spatter of hoofs coming up the drive sent Mrs. Dunlop to the sitting-room window. She tried to see out through streaming showers that darkened the panes. “Isn't that Mrs. Bogardus? Why, it is! Put on your shoes, Chauncey, quick! Help her in 'n' take her horse to the shed. Take an umbrella with you.” Chauncey the younger, meekly drying his shoes by the kitchen fire, put them on, not stopping to lace them, and slumped down the porch steps, pursued by his mother's orders. She watched him a moment struggling with a cranky umbrella, and then turned her attention to herself and the room. Mrs. Bogardus made her calls in the morning, and always plainly on business. She had not seen the inside of Cerissa's parlor for ten years. This was a grievance which Cerissa referred to spasmodically, being seized with it when she was otherwise low in her mind. “My sakes! Can't I remember my mother telling how _her_ mother used to drive over and spend the afternoon, and bring her sewing and the baby--whichever one was the baby. They called each other Chrissy and Angevine, and now she don't even speak of her own children to us by their first names. It's 'Mrs. Bowen' and 'Mr. Paul;' just as if she was talking to her servants.” “What's that to us? We've got a good home here for as long as we want to stay. She's easy to work for, if you do what she says.” Chauncey respected Mrs. Bogardus's judgment and her straightforward business habits. Other matters he left alone. But Cerissa was ambitious and emotional, and she stayed indoors, doing little things and thinking small thoughts. She resented her commanding neighbor's casual manners. There was something puzzling and difficult to meet in her plainness of speech, which excluded the personal relation. It was like the cut and finish of her clothes--mysterious in their simplicity, and not to be imitated cheaply. When the two met, Cerissa was immediately reduced to a state of flimsy apology which she made up for by being particularly hot and self-assertive in speaking of the lady afterward. “There is the parlor, in perfect order,” she fretted, as she stood waiting to open the front door; “but of course she wouldn't let me take her in there--that would be too much like visiting.” The next moment she had corrected her facial expression, and was offering smiling condolences to Mrs. Bogardus on the state of her attire.