As I grew older and more observant, I used to wonder what had induced my aunt to marry him. Again it was my Grandmother Cardover who told me, “He spuffled Lavinia into it, my dear.” It seems that he caught her by the vast commercial and humanitarian possibilities of one of his many plans. When she awoke to the fact that her husband was not a man, but the incarnation of perpetual boyhood, she may have been disappointed, but she did not show it. Like a sensible woman, instead of crying her eyes out, she set about earning a livelihood. Uncle Obad had one marketable asset--his religion and the friends he gained by it. She took a decayed mansion in Charity Grove and established a Christian Boarding House. All her lodgers were young men, and by that proud subterfuge of poverty they were known as paying-guests. The only Christian feature that I can remember about her establishment was that my uncle said grace before all meals at which the lodgers were present. At the midday meal, from which they were absent, it was omitted. The Christian Boarding House idea caught on with provincial parents whose sons were moving up to the city for the first time; it seemed to guarantee home morals. The sons soon perceived how matters stood and buried their agnostic prejudices beneath good feeding. A general atmosphere of obligation was created by my aunt in her husband’s favor; she always spoke as though it was very kind of so public a man as Mr. Spreckles to squander his scanty privacy by letting paying-guests share his roof. She made such a gallant show with what she earned that everyone thought her husband had a private fortune, which enabled him to live in such style and give so much time to charitable works. She would hint as much in conversing with her friends, and invariably feigned the greatest pride and contentment in his activities. Thanks to his spuffling and her courage, there were not five people outside the family who ever guessed the true circumstances. But when all is said, the real business of my Uncle Obad’s life was not philanthropy or running a boardinghouse, but poultry-raising. It was he who gave me the old white hen, without which I might never have met Ruthita. My money-making instincts were roused by his talk of the profits to be derived from eggs. I was enthusiastic to follow in his footsteps. To this end, at the hour of parting, when I was returning to Pope Lane, he gave me an ancient white Leghorn. He did not tell me she was ancient; he recommended her to me as belonging to a strain that could never get broody.