m and eddicated him, but Godfrey, he
took a shine to a poor girl thar', dreadfully handsome, she was, but yet
they was both of 'em young, and it didn't suit the old uncle, so he left
him to shift for himself. And Godfrey, he tried one thing and another,
and never held long to nothin', I guess, and finally he drifted down this
way, and here he stuck.

"He's got a good head, Godfrey has, but he wasn't never extry fond o'
work, I reckon, and he's growed dreadful rheumatiky lame, and he has his
sprees, occasionally.

"Liddy, that's his wife, teacher, she was full good enough for him when
ye come to the p'int. Oh, she's a smart wife, and she's had a hard row,
so many children and nothin' to do with, as ye might say. Why, they've
had thirteen children, ain't they, ma?

"Le' me see--four on 'em dead, and three on 'em--no! four on 'em married,
and three on 'em--How is't, ma?"

Grandma then took up the tangled thread of the old Captain's discourse,
with calm disdain, and proceeded to disclose an appalling array of
statistics, not only in regard to the Cradlebow family, but including
generations of men hitherto unknown and remote.

When I signified a desire to retire for the night, Madeline informed me,
with a brisk and hopeful air, that my room was "all ready now."

She led the way up a short and narrow little staircase into a low garret,
where, amid a dark confusion of objects, I was forcibly reminded of the
rows of hard substances suspended from the rafters. Turning to the left,
the rays of the candle revealed a small red door framed in among the
unpainted boards of the wall.

There, Madeline bade me a flippant and musical good night, and I entered
my room, alone.

Within, the contrast between the door and the brown walls was still more
effectively drawn.

The bed, neatly made, stood in a niche where the roof slanted perceptibly
downward, so that the sweetly unconscious sleeper (as I found afterwards)
perchance tossing his head upward, in a dream, was doomed to bring that
member into resounding contact with the ceiling, I judged something of
the restless proclivities of the last occupants of the room by the amount
of plastering of which this particular section had been deprived. In
this, and in other places where it had fallen, it had been collected and
tacked up again to the ceiling in cloth bags which presented a graceful
and drooping, though at first sight, rather enigmatical appearance.

The chimney ran through