the large cloth
which covered the middle of the floor, and which the women call a
bocking, had been bought and nailed down there, after a solemn
family-counsel, as the best means of concealing the too evident darns
which years of good cheer had made needful in our stanch old household
friend, the three-ply carpet, made in those days when to be a three-ply
was a pledge of continuance and service.

Well, it was a joyous and bustling day, when, after one of those
domestic whirlwinds which the women are fond of denominating
house-cleaning, the new Brussels carpet was at length brought in and
nailed down, and its beauty praised from mouth to mouth. Our old friends
called in and admired, and all seemed to be well, except that I had that
light and delicate presage of changes to come which indefinitely brooded
over me.

The first premonitory symptom was the look of apprehensive suspicion
with which the female senate regarded the genial sunbeams that had
always glorified our bow-window.

"This house ought to have inside blinds," said Marianne, with all the
confident decision of youth; "this carpet will be ruined, if the sun is
allowed to come in like that."

"And that dirty little canary must really be hung in the kitchen," said
Jane; "he always did make such a litter, scattering his seed-chippings
about; and he never takes his bath without flirting out some water. And,
mamma, it appears to me it will never do to have the plants here. Plants
are always either leaking through the pots upon the carpet, or
scattering bits of blossoms and dead leaves, or some accident upsets or
breaks a pot. It was no matter, you know, when we had the old carpet;
but this we really want to have kept nice."

Mamma stood her ground for the plants,--darlings of her heart for many a
year,--but temporized, and showed that disposition towards compromise
which is most inviting to aggression.

I confess I trembled; for, of all radicals on earth, none are to be
compared to females that have once in hand a course of domestic
innovation and reform. The sacred fire, the divine _furor_, burns in
their bosoms, they become perfect Pythonesses, and every chair they sit
on assumes the magic properties of the tripod. Hence the dismay that
lodges in the bosoms of us males at the fateful spring and autumn
seasons, denominated house-cleaning. Who can say whither the awful gods,
the prophetic fates, may drive our fair household divinities; what sins
of ours may b