Prior to his eighth birthday came a shift in the house. Rhoda and Adelaide were brought together into one room--it had been their request. Quincy was ousted from his bed--he regarded it as a promotion; and his room was given over to the crippled Marsden who was old and crabbed even for his hoary seventeen years. Jonas was removed from his spacious quarters to a wide, transformed attic under the eaves where the ceiling sloped and an air of solitude pervaded. A cot was placed beside his wooden bed for Quincy. The room left vacant on the second floor was made ready to receive a lodger; for the Burt finances were, as ever, ragged. It was written that no lodger should come. But there, at least, stood the empty room, in token of the family’s scrupulous intentions. In this sharing of a room, apart from the ruck of life, with his life’s ideal, began an era in Quincy’s progress. The lad rejoiced in its marked position, under the roof. He rejoiced in the extra flight of stairs to be pattered up to reach it. He rejoiced in the singularity of the ceiling, in the lack of a conventional wall-paper,--the room was roughly wainscoted in pine, and plastered. But most of all, he rejoiced in the symbolism of his little white cot alongside the majestic bed. And so, since his happiness required precisely the meed of haughty tolerance, the stressed superiority of Jonas,--Quincy was happy. Jonas was fourteen. In coloring and contour, he derived from his father. He was blond of hair and his eyes were brown. Already, an incipient fleshliness was there. His head was small--dull and indelicate in its square mass; his nose was short and thick and his mouth was heavy. He was an ordinary boy. But he was playful, arrogant, world-wise and fourteen. So, for the present, he suited the demands of the slight, dark, wiry child who was his brother. Quincy lay wide-eyed in his cot, waiting for his brother, with rapt expectancy. Since it was winter, he had retired after dark. His mother had taken him upstairs, while Jonas and the others remained below for their later supper. “Well, dear,--I hope you won’t mind your new room.” As she struck a match and lit the lamp, Quincy felt her presence as a rather hazardous protection from the dark which he had mind enough, now, to fear. He clung to her skirts. This was a great event--this first night with Jonas. But like all such, it was fraught with peril, touched with the dizziness of enterprise. Below, in the old room, were less thrills, less promise; but also there was less fright, less mystery. The child forgot the exalted meaning of this new phase--a room with Jonas. He saw the scared gleam of the lamp against the shadows. He saw the loom of the great bed, marked off in what seemed an infinitude of space, an infinitude of ground for visions. And almost, his heart misgave him and he regretted the smug past with Adelaide when there had been steadfast company in the vast gloom of night.