“Don’t you dare put that down!  Wait till you are told to, you lazy rascals!” he exclaimed, lifting his cane, and threatening the men who were on the point of setting the clock down, very naturally thinking they might be permitted at last to rest a moment.

“Oh, Mr. Wheeler!” said Mercy, “let them put it down anywhere, please, for the present.  I never can tell at first where I want a thing to stand.  I shall have to try it in different corners before I am sure,” and Mercy took out her portemonnaie, and came forward to pay the bearers.  As she opened it, the old man stepped nearer to her, and peered curiously into her hand.  The money in the portemonnaie was neatly folded and assorted, each kind by itself, in a separate compartment.  The old man nodded, and muttered to himself, “Fine young woman! fine young woman!  Business, business!—­Who taught you, child, to sort your money that way?” he suddenly asked.

“Why, no one taught me,” replied Mercy.  “I found that it saved time not to have to fumble all through a portemonnaie for a ten-cent piece.  It looks neater, too, than to have it all in a crumpled mass,” she added, smiling and looking up in the old man’s face.  “I don’t like disorder.  Such a place as your store-room would drive me crazy.”

The old man was not listening.  He was looking about the room with a dissatisfied expression of countenance.  In a few moments, he said abruptly,—­

“’S this all the furniture you’ve got?”

Mrs. Carr colored, and looked appealingly at Mercy; but Mercy laughed, and replied as she would have answered her own grandfather,—­

“Oh, no, not all we have!  We have five more rooms furnished.  It is all we have for this room, however.  These rooms are all larger than our rooms were at home, and so the things look scanty.  But I shall get more by degrees.”

“Hm! hm!  Want any thing out o’ my lumber-room?  Have it’s well’s not.  Things no good to anybody.”

“Oh, no, thank you, Mr. Wheeler.  We have all we need.  I could not think of taking any thing more from you.  We are under great obligation to you now for the clock,” said Mercy; and Mrs. Carr bewilderedly ejaculated, “Oh, no, sir,—­no, sir!  There isn’t any call for you to give us any thin’.”

While they were speaking, the old man was rapidly going out of the house; with quick, short steps like a child, and tapping his cane on the floor at every step.  In the doorway he halted a moment, and, without looking back, said, “Well, well, let me know, if you do want any thing.  Have it’s well’s not,” and he was gone.

“Oh, Mercy! he’s crazy, sure’s you’re alive.  You’ll get took up for hevin’ this clock.  Whatever made you take it, child?” exclaimed Mrs. Carr, walking round and round the clock, and dusting it here and there with a corner of her apron.