see here, mother; I will make it
easy for you. Keep this as your own home as long as you live, and I
will make another home for myself and the wife you do not like."

"No, no, my dear boy, ever generous, ever kind! As your wife she
_must_ be dear to me. What is a mother's greedy aspiration compared to
her child's real happiness? Follow your bent, my boy; follow it with
your mother's sanction. And now, do you still love me a little, Rube,
in spite of this new love?"

"A little, dear mother!" He threw his arms about her. "No, not a
little! Much, very much; more than ever before! And believe me, when
you know Mell, you will feel very differently about it. You have only
seen her so far, through Clara's eyes; come and see her as she is;
come now, mother, with me."

And so it came about that on a certain day Rube came as usual to the
farm-house, but not as usual, alone. His mother came with him--came,
looking about her with prying eyes, and a nose bent on thorough
investigation, and a mind ready to ferret out every idea in Mell's
brain; a mind ready to probe every weak place in Mell's character; a
mind ready to catechize every integument in Mell's body.

The look of things about the premises prepossessed her at once in the
girl's favor. The house was neither large, handsome, nor fresh; but it
was venerable, an attribute greatly esteemed by people of rank. Much
of its unpainted ugliness was concealed in trailing vines and creeping
ivy, much of its dilapidation shrouded in luxuriant shrubbery, an
every-day adaptation of the simplest elements of relief, technique.
The little front garden, in its white-sanded walks and well-weeded
beds, brilliant in many-hued blossoms, was just like a spruce
country-damsel in her best bib and tucker. The little parlor, daintily
furnished and tastefully arranged, where the visitor trod, not on bare
boards, but a neat carpet, commingling Turkish forms and Yankee
interpretations, was still more suggestive. Into this cozy apartment
Mell had really crowded, in practical forms, all she had learned of
human nature as it appears in man's nature. Pretty things there were,
but none too pretty for use. Perfect neatness there was, but not too
perfect to interfere with a man's love for the let-me-do-as-I-please
principle. Here a man who smokes might, after asking permission, puff
away to his heart's content, puff away without a compunction and
without a frown from its ministering spirit. Or, if my lord fe