"I didn't know but I had to cook breakfast all over again." "I will not give you any more trouble than I can help--if you will only give me a room by and by." "There's nothin' fur I to _give_--you can pick and choose in the whole house. Us has only these rooms down here; there's the whole big barn of a house overhead. Folks meant it to be a grand house, I s'pose; it's big enough; but I don't want no more of it than I can take care of." "You can take care of my room, I suppose?" said Rotha. The woman gave a kind of grunt, which was neither assent nor denial, but rather expressed her estimation of the proposal. She went on silently and rapidly with her kitchen work; putting up her dishes, brushing the floor, making up the fire, putting on a pot or two. Rotha watched and waited in silence also, trying to be patient. Finally Mrs. Purcell took down a key, and addressing herself to Rotha, said, "Now I'm ready. If you like to come, you can see what there is." She unlocked a door and led the way up a low flight of steps. At the top of them another door let them out upon a wide hall. The hall ran from one side of the house to the other. With doors thrown open to let in the air and light this might have been a very pleasant place; now however it was dark and dank and chilly, with that dismal closeness and rawness of atmosphere which is always found in a house long shut up. Doors on the one hand and on the other hand opened into it, and at the end where the two women had entered it, ran up a wide easy staircase. "Will you go higher?" said Mrs. Purcell; "or will you have a room here?" Rotha opened one of the doors. Light coming scantily in through chinks in the shutters revealed dimly a very large, very lofty apartment, furnished as a drawing-room. She opened another door; it gave a repetition of the same thing, only the colour of the hangings and upholsteries seemed to be different. A third, and a fourth; they were all alike; large, stately rooms, fit to hold a great deal of company, or to accommodate an exceedingly numerous family with sitting and dining and receiving rooms. The four saloons took up the entire floor. "There is no bedroom here," said Rotha. "The folks that lived here didn't make no 'count o' sleepin', I guess. They put all the house into their parlours. I suppose the days was longer than the nights, when they was alive." "But there must be bedrooms somewhere?" "You can go up and see. _Us_ wouldn't sleep up there for nothin'. Us could ha' took what we liked when us come; but I said to Mr. Purcell,--I said,--I wasn't goin' to break my back runnin' up and down stairs; and if he wanted to live up there, he had got to live without I. So us fixed up a little room down near the kitchen. These rooms is awful hot in summer, too. I can dry fruit in 'em as good as in an oven."