o a great living room. Here was Gilbert's green painted
floor, smooth and glossy, with braided rugs bought from neighbors in
East Beulah; here all the old-fashioned Gilbert furniture that the
Careys had kept during their many wanderings; here all the quaint chairs
that Mr. Bill Harmon could pick up at a small price; here were two noble
fireplaces, one with a crane and iron pot filled with flowers, the other
filled sometimes with sprays of green asparagus and sometimes with
fragrant hemlock boughs. The paper was one in which green rushes and
cat-o'-nine-tails grew on a fawn-colored ground, and anything that the
Careys did not possess for the family sitting room Ossian Popham went
straight home and made in his barn. He could make a barrel-chair or an
hour-glass table, a box lounge and the mattress to put on top of it, or
a low table for games and puzzles, or a window seat. He could polish the
piano and then sit down to it and play "Those Tassels on Her Boots" or
"Marching through Georgia" with great skill. He could paint bunches of
gold grapes and leaves on the old-fashioned high-backed rocker, and, as
soon as it was dry, could sit down in it and entertain the whole family
without charging them a penny.

The housewarming could not be until the later autumn, Mrs. Carey had
decided, for although most of the living rooms could be finished, Cousin
Ann's expensive improvements were not to be set in motion until Bill
Harmon heard from Mr. Hamilton that his tenants were not to be disturbed
for at least three years.

The house, which was daily growing into a home, was full of the busy hum
of labor from top to bottom and from morning till night, and there was
hardly a moment when Mother Carey and the girls were not transporting
articles of furniture through the rooms, and up and down the staircases,
to see how they would look somewhere else. This, indeed, had been the
diversion of their simple life for many years, and was just as
delightful, in their opinion, as buying new things. Any Carey, from
mother down to Peter, would spring from his chair at any moment and
assist any other Carey to move a sofa, a bureau, a piano, a kitchen
stove, if necessary, with the view of determining if it would add a new
zest to life in a different position.

Not a word has been said thus far about the Yellow House barn, the barn
that the "fool Hamilton boys" (according to Bill Harmon's theories) had
converted from a place of practical usefulness an