n otherwise, for my house was now more firmly
settled than it had been. But she did not value the opinion of a man
who did not know enough to put his house in a place where it would be
likely to stay, and she could eat no more breakfast, and was even
afraid to stay under her own roof until experienced mechanics had been
summoned to look into the state of affairs.

I hurried away to the town, and it was not long before several
carpenters and masons were on the spot. After a thorough examination,
they assured Mrs. Carson that there was no danger, that my house would
do no farther damage to her premises, but, to make things certain, they
would bring some heavy beams and brace the front of my house against
her cellar wall. When that should be done it would be impossible for
it to move any farther.

"But I don't want it braced!" cried Mrs. Carson. "I want it taken
away. I want it out of my back yard!"

The master carpenter was a man of imagination and expedients. "That is
quite another thing, ma'am," said he. "We'll fix this gentleman's
house so that you needn't be afraid of it, and then, when the time
comes to move it, there's several ways of doing that. We might rig up
a powerful windlass at the top of the hill, and perhaps get a
steam-engine to turn it, and we could fasten cables to the house and
haul her back to where she belongs."

"And can you take your oaths," cried Mrs. Carson, "that those ropes
won't break, and when that house gets half-way up the hill it won't
come sliding down ten times faster than it did, and crash into me and
mine and everything I own on earth? No, sir! I'll have no house
hauled up a hill back of me!"

"Of course," said the carpenter, "it would be a great deal easier to
move it on this ground, which is almost level--"

"And cut down my trees to do it! No, sir!"

"Well, then," said he, "there is no way to do but to take it apart and
haul it off."

"Which would make an awful time at the back of my house while you were
doing it!" exclaimed Mrs. Carson.

I now put in a word. "There's only one thing to do that I can see!" I
exclaimed. "I will sell it to a match factory. It is almost all wood,
and it can be cut up in sections about two inches thick, and then split
into matches."

Kitty smiled. "I should like to see them," she said, "taking away the
little sticks in wheelbarrows!"

"There is no need of trifling on the subject," said Mrs. Carson. "I
have had a great deal t