could be made. But then Samantha had insisted
upon having a separate domain, and Keziah and Pamela had imitated their
elder sister to a fraction.

The "guest-chamber" had to be provided as well, or what would become of
the good old Long Island notions of hospitality?

Dab said nothing while the partition was under discussion, nor for a
while afterwards; but one day at dinner, just after the coming of a
letter from Miranda, announcing the speedy arrival of herself and her
husband, he quietly remarked,--

"Now I can't sleep in Ham's room any longer, I suppose I'll have to go
out on the roof. I won't sleep in the garret or in the cellar."

"That will be a good deal as Mrs. Morris says, when she comes," calmly
responded his mother.

"As Miranda says!" said Dab, with a long breath.

"Miranda?" gasped Samantha and her sisters in chorus.

"Yes, my dears, certainly," said their mother. "This is Mrs. Morris's
house,--or her husband's,--not mine. All the arrangements I have made
are only temporary. She and Ham both have ideas and wills of their own.
I've only done the best I could for the time being."

The girls looked at one another in blank amazement, over the idea of
Mrs. Kinzer being any thing less than the mistress of any house she
might happen to be in; but Dabney laid down his knife and fork, with--

"It's all right, then. If Ham and Miranda are to settle it, I think I'll
take the room Sam has now. You needn't take away your books, Sam: I may
want to read some of them, or lend them to Annie. You and Kezi and Mele
had better take that upper room back. The smell of the paint's all gone
now, and there's three kinds of carpet on the floor."

"Dabney!" exclaimed Samantha, reproachfully, and with an appealing look
at her mother, who, however, said nothing on either side, and was a
woman of too much good sense to take any other view of the matter than
that she had announced.

Things were again all running on smoothly and pleasantly, before dinner
was over; but Dab's ideas of how the house should be divided were likely
to result in some changes,--perhaps not precisely the ones he indicated,
but such as would give him something better than a choice between the
garret, the cellar, and the roof. At all events, only three days would
now intervene before the arrival of the two travellers, and any thing in
the way of further discussion of the room question was manifestly out of
order.

Every thing required for the coming r