round through all four of the ground rooms, to the queer
corner staircase, and up into the "long west chamber," to show them
what a rackety old place it was, and to see whether they supposed it
could be made fit.

"Why it's like the Romance of the Forest!" said Helena, delighted.
"I wish _we_ had come here. Don't you have ghosts, or robbers, or
something, up and down those stairs, Miss Waite?" For she had spied
a door that led directly out of the room, from beside the chimney,
up into the rambling old garret, smelling of pine boards and
penny-royal.

"No; nothing but squirrels and bees, and sometimes a bat," answered
Miss Arabel.

"Well, it doesn't want fixing. If you fix it, you will spoil it. I
shall come here and sleep with Dorris,--see if I don't."

The floor was bare, painted a dark, marbled gray. In the middle was
a great braided rug, of blue and scarlet and black. The walls were
pale gray, with a queer, stencilled scroll-and-dash border of
vermilion and black paint.

There was an old, high bedstead, with carved frame and posts, bare
of drapery; an antiquated chest of drawers; and a half-circular
table with tall, plain, narrow legs, between two of the windows.
There was a corner cupboard, and a cupboard over the chimney. The
doors of these, and the high wainscot around the room, were stained
in old-fashioned "imitation mahogany," very streaky and red. The
wainscot was so heavily finished that the edge running around the
room might answer for a shelf.

"Just curtains, and toilet covers, and a little low rocking chair,"
said Mrs. Ledwith. "That is all you want."

"But the windows are so high," suggested Desire. "A low chair would
bury her up, away from all the pleasantness. I'll tell you what I
would have, Mr. Kincaid. A kind of dais, right across that corner,
to take in two windows; with a carpet on it, and a chair, and a
little table."

"Just the thing!" said Kenneth. "That is what I wanted you for, Miss
Desire," he said in a pleased, gentle way, lowering his tone to her
especial hearing, as he stood beside her in the window.

And Desire was very happy to have thought of it.

Helena was spurred by emulation to suggest something.

"I'd have a--hammock--somewhere," she said.

"Good," said Kenneth. "That shall be out under the great butternut."

The great butternut walled in one of the windows with a wilderness
of green, and the squirrels ran chattering up and down the brown
branches, and peeping i