sick with a headache
had been visited and examined minutely, while Frank watched him
nervously, wondering if he would think they had greatly injured
anything, or had expended too much money on furniture. But Arthur was
thinking of none of these things, and found fault with nothing except
the drain and the gas fixtures, all of which he declared bad, saying
that the latter must be changed at once, and that ten pounds of copperas
must be bought immediately and put down the drain, and that quantities
of chloride of lime and carbolic acid must be placed where there was the
least danger of vegetable decomposition.

'I am very sensitive to smells, and afraid of them, too, for they breed
malaria and disease of all kinds,' he said to the cook, whose nose and
chin both were high in the air, not on account of any obnoxious odor,
but because of this unreasonable meddling with what she considered her
own affairs. If things were to go on in this way, she said to the
house-maid, and if that man was going to poke his nose into drains, and
gas-pipes, and kerosene lamps, and bowls of sour milk which she might
have forgotten, she should give notice to quit.

But when, half an hour later, some boxes and trunks which had come by
express were deposited in the back hall, and Arthur, who was
superintending them, said to her, as he pointed to a large black trunk,
'I think this has the dress patterns and shawls I brought for you,
girls; for though I did not know you personally, I knew that women were
always pleased with anything from Paris' her feelings underwent a
radical change, and Arthur was free to smell the drain and the gas
fixtures as much as he liked.

He was very busy, and though always pleasant, and even familiar at
times, there was in all he said and did an air of ownership, as if he
had assumed the mastership. And he had. Everything was his, and he knew
it, and Frank knew it, too, and gave no sign of rebelling when the reins
were taken from him by one who seemed to be driving at a break-neck
speed.

At lunch, while the brothers were together, Arthur announced his
intentions in part, but not until Frank, who was anxious to get it off
his mind, said to him:

'By the way, I suppose you will be going to the office this afternoon,
to see Colvin and look over the books. I believe you will find them
straight, and hope you will not think I have spent too much, or drawn
too large a salary. It you do, I will--'

'Nonsense!' was Arthu