“Oh, hev we?  Well, well, I daresay it’s comfortable enough; so the sun shines in mornin’s, thet’s the most I care for.  You’ll make any kind o’ house pooty to look at inside, an’ I reckon we needn’t roost on the fences outside, a-lookin’ at it, any more’n we choose to.  It does look, for all the world though, like ’Bijah Jenkins’s old yaller barn; ‘n’ thet there jog’s jest the way he jined on his cow-shed.  I declare it’s too redicklus.”  And the old lady laughed till she had to wipe her spectacles.

“It could be made very pretty, I think,” said Mercy, “for all it is so hideous now.  I know just what I’d do to it, if it were mine.  I’d throw out a big bay window in that corner where the jog is, and another on the middle of the north side, and then run a piazza across the west side, and carry the platform round both the bay windows.  I saw a picture of a house in a book Mr. Allen had, which looked very much as this would look then.  Oh, but I’d like to do it!” Mercy’s imagination was so fired with the picture she had made to herself of the house thus altered and improved, that she could not easily relinquish it.

“But, Mercy, you don’t know the lay o’ the rooms, child.  You don’ ‘no’ where that ere jog comes.  Your bay window mightn’t come so’s’t would be of any use.  Yer wouldn’t build one jest to look at, would you?” said her mother.

“I’m not so sure I wouldn’t, if I had plenty of money,” replied Mercy, laughing.  “But I have no idea of building bay windows on other people’s houses.  I was only amusing myself by planning it.  I’d rather have that house, old and horrid as it is, than any house in the town.  I like the situation so much, and the woods are so beautiful.  Perhaps I’ll earn a lot of money some day, and buy the place, and make it just as we like it.”

“You earn money, child!” said Mrs. Carr, in a tone of unqualified wonder.  “How could you earn money, I’d like to know?”

“Oh, make bonnets or gowns, dear little mother, or teach school,” said Mercy, coloring.  “Mr. Allen said I was quite well enough fitted to teach our school at home, if I liked.”

“But, Mercy, child, you’d never go to do any such thing’s thet, would yer now?” said her mother, piteously.  “Don’t ye hev all ye want, Mercy?  Ain’t there money enough for our clothes?  I’m sure I don’t need much; an’ I could do with a good deal less, if there was any thing you wanted, dear.  Your father he ’d never rest in his grave, ef he thought his little Mercy was a havin’ to arn money for her livin’.  You didn’t mean it, child, did yer?  Say yer didn’t mean it, Mercy,” and tears stood in the poor old woman’s eyes.