I said. "She's been a good friend to me."

"She has, sart'n," my uncle agreed.

We began reading the book that evening in the candle-light and soon
finished it. I was thrilled by the ideal of human service with which the
calling of the lawyer was therein lifted up and illuminated. After that
I had no doubt of my way.

That week a letter came to me from the Senator, announcing the day of
Mrs. Wright's arrival in Canton and asking me to meet and assist her in
getting the house to rights. I did so. She was a pleasant-faced, amiable
woman and a most enterprising house cleaner. I remember that my first
task was mending the wheelbarrow.

"I don't know what Silas would do if he were to get home and find his
wheelbarrow broken," said she. "It is almost an inseparable companion of
his."

The schoolmaster and his family were fishing and camping upon the river,
and so I lived at the Senator's house with Mrs. Wright and her mother
until he arrived. What a wonderful house it was, in my view! I was awed
by its size and splendor, its soft carpets and shiny brass and mahogany.
Yet it was very simple.

I hoed the garden and cleaned its paths and mowed the dooryard and did
some painting in the house. I remember that Mrs. Ebenezer Binks--wife
of the deacon and the constable--came in while I was at the latter task
early one morning to see if there were anything she could do.

She immediately sat down and talked constantly until noon of her family
and especially of the heartlessness and general misconduct of her son
and daughter-in-law because they had refused to let her apply the name
of Divine Submission to the baby. It had been a hard blow to Mrs. Binks,
because this was the one and only favor which she had ever asked of
them. She reviewed the history of the Binkses from Ebenezer--the
First--down to that present day. There had been three Divine Submissions
in the family and they had made the name of Binks known wherever people
knew anything. When Mrs. Wright left the room Mrs. Binks directed her
conversation at me, and when Mrs. Wright returned I only got the spray
of it. By dinner time we were drenched in a way of speaking and Mrs.
Binks left, assuring us that she would return later and do anything in
her power.

"My stars!" Mrs. Wright exclaimed. "If you see her coming lock the door
and go and hide in a closet until she goes away. Mrs. Binks always
brings her ancestors with her and they fill the house so that there's no
room