, minerals, odds and ends--which
the minister loved and with which his lady cousin never interfered.

"Louisa," Hayward had told his cousin when she entered upon her post,
"do as you like with the whole house, but let my little study alone.
Let it look as if it had been stirred up with a garden-rake--that little
room is my territory, and no disgrace to you, my dear, if the dust rises
in clouds at every step."

Jim was as fond of the little room as his friend. He entered, and sighed
a great sigh of satisfaction as he sank into the shabby, dusty hollow
of a large chair before the hearth fire. Immediately a black cat leaped
into his lap, gazed at him with greenjewel eyes, worked her paws,
purred, settled into a coil, and slept. Jim lit his pipe and threw the
match blissfully on the floor. Dr. Hayward set an electric coffee-urn at
its work, for the little room was a curious mixture of the comfortable
old and the comfortable modern.

"Sam shall serve our luncheon in here," he said, with a staid glee.

Jim nodded happily.

"Louisa will not mind," said Hayward. "She is precise, but she has
a fine regard for the rights of the individual, which is most
commendable." He seated himself in a companion chair to Jim's, lit
his own pipe, and threw the match on the floor. Occasionally, when the
minister was out, Sam, without orders so to do, cleared the floor of
matches.

Hayward smoked and regarded his friend, who looked troubled despite his
comfort. "What is it, Jim?" asked the minister at last.

"I don't know how to do what is right for me to do," replied the little
man, and his face, turned toward his friend, had the puzzled earnestness
of a child.

Hayward laughed. It was easily seen that his was the keener mind. In
natural endowments there had never been equality, although there was
great similarity of tastes. Jim, despite his education, often lapsed
into the homely vernacular of which he heard so much. An involuntarily
imitative man in externals was Jim, but essentially an original. Jim
proceeded.

"You know, Edward, I have never been one to complain," he said, with an
almost boyish note of apology.

"Never complained half enough; that's the trouble," returned the other.

"Well, I overheard something Mis' Adkins said to Mis' Amos Trimmer the
other afternoon. Mis' Trimmer was calling on Mis' Adkins. I couldn't
help overhearing unless I went outdoors, and it was snowing and I had a
cold. I wasn't listening."

"Had