measure in my house but myself, if they are my grand-nephews, and I
most ought to go back to the summer kitchen to finish and pay 'em--if
you don't mind. There's the album and last week's paper, and you just
make yourself to home till I get back."

Left alone, in somewhat austere comfort, Miss Jenkins' eyes wandered
over the room, from the strips of bunting at the windows--black
alternating with red, white and blue, which a card in pale, cramped
writing explained: "In Memory of Garfield, 1881"--to two elaborate
fly-catchers which did duty as chandeliers from vantage points of the
ceiling. The simpler, made of straw tied with bows of red worsted,
paled before the glories of the other--a structure of silver cardboard
in cubes, the smaller depending from the corners of the larger in
diminishing effect, ribbon-bound, with a gleaming pearl bead in the
center of each.

A pair of strange tables, laden with still stranger ornaments, filled
the larger spaces of the floor and bore testimony to the prowess of
some pioneer in the line of industrial adornment.

"Poor soul," thought the girl, "here is the decorative instinct
untrammeled by imitation. Individuality inherent! Unkind fate,
furnishing no models, has produced originality." She walked toward the
larger table for closer scrutiny just as Miss Pamela re-entered the
room. A faint accent of gratification colored the latter's voice.

"I see you looking at them stands," she said; "mosaic, I call 'em. I
made every stitch of 'em myself. Soft pine they are; my brother Nathan
gave me the wood, and I'd been saving the pieces of crockery for
years. You cut places in the wood and stick 'em in close in patterns
with colors that look pretty together--sometimes you have to use a
hammer--and then you sandpaper the rough places--it's terrible on the
hands--and put on a couple of coats o' shellac. I call 'em pretty
handsome. Cousin Parthenia Roscoe was here the day I was finishing
them, and I tell you she admired 'em. Those crackle ware pieces were
from an old pitcher of her mother's that came to me--it got broken,
and I worked 'em in at the corners. I don't set no great store by that
alum cross. They're kind o' common, but it turned out so nice I let it
stand there. How did I make it? Why you just take a cross of wood and
wind it with yarn and let it hang overnight in a solution of alum and
water, and in the morning it's all crystal. 'Tain't no work; but,
land's sakes! there's enough to