l caretaker.

This give-and-take business went on for some time. At last it occurred
to him that Mrs. Burke's front porch ought to be painted, and he
conceived the notion of doing the work without her knowledge, as a
pleasant surprise to her. He waited a long time for some day when she
should be going over to shop at Martin's Junction,--when Nickey
usually managed to be taken along,--so that he could do the work
unobserved. Meantime, he collected from the hardware store various
cards with samples of different colors on them. These he would
combine and re-combine at his leisure, in the effort to decide just
what colors would harmonize. He finally decided that a rather dark
blue for the body work would go quite well, with a bright magenta for
the trimmings, and laid in a stock of paint and brushes, and possessed
his soul in patience.

So one afternoon, arriving home burdened with the spoils of Martin's
Junction, great was Mrs. Burke's astonishment and wrath when she
discovered the porch resplendent in dark blue and magenta.

"Sakes alive! Have I got to live inside of that," she snorted. "Why,
it's the worst lookin' thing I ever saw. If I don't settle _him_," she
added, "--paintin' my porch as if it belonged to him--and me as well,"
she added ambiguously. And, catching up her sun-bonnet, she hastened
over to her neighbor's and inquired for Jonathan. "Sure, he's gone to
Martin's Junction to see his brother, Mrs. Burke. He said he'd stay
over night, and I needn't come in again till to-morrow dinner-time,"
Mary McGuire replied.

Hepsey hastened home, and gathering all the rags she could find, she
summoned Nickey and Mullen, one of the men from the farm, and they
worked with turpentine for nearly two hours, cleaning off the fresh
paint from the porch. Then she sent Nickey down to the hardware store
for some light gray paint and some vivid scarlet paint, and a bit of
dryer. It did not take very long to repaint her porch gray--every
trace of the blue and the magenta having been removed by the vigorous
efforts of the three.

When it was finished, she opened the can of scarlet, and pouring in a
large quantity of dryer she sent Nickey over to see if Mary McGuire
had gone home. All three set to work that evening to paint the porch
in front of Jonathan's house. At first Mullen protested anxiously that
it was none of his business to be painting another man's porch, but
Mrs. Burke gave him a look which changed his convictions; so