ntirely in-doors, with regular hours and work and food.
Now you are going to live out-of-doors, and get your own meals,
irregularly. You didn't have on a thick coat the other night, when I saw
you at the store."

"I haven't got any that's large enough for me," said Eph, a little less
harshly, "and I've got to keep my money for other things."

"Then look out and wear flannel shirts enough," said the doctor, "if
you want to be independent. But before I go, I want to go into the
house. I want my wife to see Aunt Lois's room, and the view from the
west window;" and he led the way to the sleigh.

Eph hesitated a moment, and then followed him.

"Mary, this is Ephraim Morse. We are going in to see the Dutch tiles I
have told you of."

She smiled as she held out her mittened hand to Eph, who took it
awkwardly.

The square front room, which had been originally intended for a
keeping-room, but had been Aunt Lois's bedroom, looked out from two
windows upon the road, and from two upon the rolling, tumbling bay, and
the shining sea beyond. A tall clock, with a rocking ship above the
face, ticked in the corner. The painted floor with bright rag-mats, the
little table with a lacquer work-box, the stiff chairs, and the
old-fashioned bedstead, the china ornaments upon the mantel-piece, the
picture of "The Emeline G. in the Harbor of Canton," were just as they
had been when the patient invalid had lain there, looking from her
pillow out to sea. In twelve rude tiles set around the open fireplace,
the Hebrews were seen in twelve stages of their escape from Egypt. It
would appear from this representation that they had not restricted their
borrowings to the jewels of their oppressors, but had taken for the
journey certain Dutch clothing of the fashion of the seventeenth
century. The scenery, too, was much like that about Leyden.

"I think," said the doctor's wife, "that the painter was just a little
absent-minded when he put in that beer-barrel. And a wharf, by the Red
Sea!"

* * * * *

"I wish you would conclude to rig your boat with a new sail," said the
doctor, as he took up the reins, at parting. "There isn't a boat here
that's kept clean, and I should like to hire yours once or twice a week
in summer, if you keep her as neat as you do your house. Come in and see
me some evening, and we'll talk it over."

Eph built his boat, and, in spite of his evident dislike of visitors,
the inside finish an