picking."

"And the meadow ought to go with the house, by all means," said Mr. Allen.
"I want it for color in the background, when I look at the house as I
come down from the meeting-house hill. I wouldn't like to have anybody
else own the canvas on which the picture of my home will be oftenest
painted for my eyes. I'll give you three thousand dollars for the house,
Mercy. I can only pay two thousand down, and pay you interest on the other
thousand for a year or two. I'll soon clear it off. Will that do?"

"Oh, thank you, thank you, Mr. Allen. It will more than do," said poor
Mercy, who could not believe in such sudden good fortune; "but do you
think you ought to buy it so quick? Perhaps it wouldn't bring so much
money as that. I had not asked anybody except Deacon Jones."

Mr. Allen laughed. "If you don't look out for yourself sharper than this,
Mercy," he said, "in the new place 'where you're going to live, you'll
fare badly. Perhaps it may be true, as you say, that nobody else would
give you three thousand dollars for the house, because nobody might happen
to want to live in it. But Deacon Jones knows better than anybody else the
value of property here, and I am perfectly willing to give you the price
he set on the place. I had laid by this two thousand dollars towards my
house; and I could not build such a house as this, to-day, for three
thousand dollars. But really, Mercy, you must look 'out for yourself
better than this."

"I don't know," replied Mercy, looking out of the window, with an earnest
gaze, as if she were reading a writing a great way off,--"I don't know
about that. I doubt very much if looking out for one's self, as you call
it, is the best way to provide for one's self."

That very night Mr. Allen wrote to Stephen; in two weeks, the whole matter
was settled, and Mercy and her mother had set out on their journey. They
carried with them but one small valise. The rest of their simple wardrobe
had gone in boxes, with the furniture, by sailing vessel, to a city which
was within three hours by rail of their new home. This was the feature of
the situation which poor Mrs. Carr could not accept. In the bottom of her
heart, she fully believed that they would never again see one of those
boxes. The contents of some which she had herself packed were of a most
motley description. In the beginning of the breaking up, while Mercy was
at her wits' end, with the unwonted perplexities of packing the whole
belongi