st, as
Nannie told me with somber importance, was 'bedrid'; she hadn't walked
for three years, and the doctor said she 'never would walk in this
world'; but Mr. Marsh had made her a most ingenious wheeled chair, which
was always at the window, with her little pale, smiling face above it.
Then there was little Ned, who was four, and Oscar, who was working his
way through college. They all spoke of Oscar with deep respect. He was
awfully clever, I was sure; and his mother had a handsome photograph of
him on the mantel, under his father's picture."

"That was Jedidiah Marsh," explained Mrs. Waite. "I remember him. He was
a very handsome man and a plumber. He wasn't very much of a plumber as I
recall him; but he was an inventor always going to patent something,
which always turned out to have been discovered before. Finally he did
put some machine on the market, and died leaving the business in a
tangle, and lots of debts, which his widow and Caleb Marsh paid off to
the last cent of interest, although it took them years to do it."

"Yes," said Mrs. Clymer; "he told Mr. Clymer once that maybe he wasn't
legally liable for Jed's debts, but there never was a Marsh yet that
anybody could find fault with for doing anything dishonest; and they
shouldn't begin with Jed, who was all right, whether his washing machine
was or wasn't. I have a sneaking idea myself that Caleb Marsh, who was
shrewd in his simple way, did not take Jed's wonderful genius seriously;
but Jed's wife did. Once I carried Nannie home when she had been to see
you, Connie; and I remember their neat little parlor, with the pictures
of Lincoln and Grant and the Rogers groups and some really fine, simple
furniture which Marsh had made himself. But I remember best the two
portraits over the mantel--a pretty girl I should have known was
Nannie's mother, only an enlarged photograph, but very well done, and an
oil portrait of Jedidiah, which had been done from a photograph by the
gifted daughter of a neighbor, who was learning to paint. It was pretty
awful. I wonder didn't Caleb Marsh think so, too."

"If he did, he never said so, you may be sure," said Mrs. Curtis
quickly; "and somehow I have a kind of affection for that picture, too.
There were always flowers before both of the portraits; perhaps in
winter no more than some sprigs of lemon verbena or a pot of ivy, but
always some green thing. Do you know, the pictures, and the flowers
always before them, that little