to conceive
of any reason for it. Very possibly, it was only a carpenter's blunder;
for Billy Jacobs was, no doubt, his own architect, and left all details of
the work to the builders. Be that as it may, the little, clumsy,
meaningless jog ruined the house,--gave it an uncomfortably awry look,
like a dining-table awkwardly pieced out for an emergency by another table
a little too narrow.

The house had been for several years occupied by families of mill
operatives, and had gradually acquired that indefinable, but unmistakable
tenement-house look, which not even neatness and good repair can wholly
banish from a house. The orchard behind the house had so run down for want
of care that it looked more like a tangle of wild trees than like any
thing which had ever been an orchard. Yet the Roxbury Russets and Baldwins
of that orchard had once been Billy Jacobs's great pride, the one point of
hospitality which his miserliness never conquered. Long after it would
have broken his heart to set out a generous dinner for a neighbor, he
would feast him on choice apples, and send him away with a big basket full
in his hands. Now every passing school-boy helped himself to the wan,
withered, and scanty fruit; and nobody had thought it worth while to mend
the dilapidated fences which might have helped to shut them out.

Even Mrs. White, with all her indifference to externals, rebelled at first
at the idea of going to live in the old Jacobs house.

"I'll never go there, Stephen," she said petulantly. "I'm not going to
live in half a house with the mill people; and it's no better than a barn,
the hideous, old, faded, yellow thing!"

If it crossed Stephen's mind that there was a touch of late retribution
in his mother's having come at last to a sense of suffering because she
must live in an unsightly house, he did not betray it.

He replied very gently. He was never heard to speak other than gently to
his mother, though to every one else his manner was sometimes brusque and
dictatorial.

"But, mother, I think we must. It is the only way that we can be sure of
the rent. And, if we live ourselves in one half of it, we shall find it
much easier to get good tenants for the other part. I promise you none of
the mill people shall ever live there again. Please do not make it hard
for me, mother. We must do it."

When Stephen said "must," his mother never gainsaid him. He was only
twenty-five, but his will was stronger than hers,--as much s