“Suppose you lay it in the fireplace?  It will just rest nicely across those evergreen boughs, and—­be in the current of ventilation outward.”

“Well, that’s an idea, to be sure.—­Miss Craydocke!”—­Sin Saxon says this in a sudden interjectional way, as if it were with some quite fresh idea,—­“I’m certain you play chess!”

“You’re mistaken.  I don’t.”

“You would, then, by intuition.  Your counter-moves are—­so—­triumphant.  Why, it’s really an ornament!” With a little stress and strain that made her words interjectional, she had got it into place, thrusting one end up the throat of the chimney, and lodging the crotch that held the nest upon the stems of fresh pine that lay across the andirons; and the “odds and ends,” in safe position, and suggesting neither harm nor unsuitableness, looked unique and curious, and not so ugly.

“It’s really an ornament!” repeated Sin, shaking the dust off her dress.

“As you expected, of course,” replied Miss Craydocke.

“Well, I wasn’t—­not to say—­confident.  I was afraid it mightn’t be much but scientific.  But now—­if you don’t forget and light a fire under it some day, Miss Craydocke!”

“I shan’t forget; and I’m very much obliged, really.  Perhaps by and by I shall put it in a rough box and send it to a nephew of mine, with some other things, for his collection.”

“Goodness, Miss Craydocke!  They won’t express it.  They’ll think it’s an infernal machine, or a murder.  But it’s disposed of for the present, anyway.  The truth was, you know, twenty-five cents is a kind of cup of cold water to Jimmy Wigley, and then there was the fun of bringing it in, and I didn’t know anybody but you to offer it to; I’m so glad you like it; the girls thought you wouldn’t.  Perhaps I can get you another, or something else as curious, some day,—­a moose’s horns, or a bear-skin; there’s no knowing.  But now, apropos of the nest, I’ve a crow to pick with you.  You gave me horrible dreams all night, the last time I came to see you.  I don’t know whether it was your little freedmen’s meal-bags, or Miss Letitia’s organizing and executive genius, or the cup of cold water you spoke of, or—­it’s just occurred to me—­the fuss I had over my waterfall that day, trying to make it into a melon; but I had the most extraordinary time endeavoring to pay you a visit.  Down South it was, and there you were, organizing and executing, after all, on the most tremendous scale, some kind of freedmen’s institution.  You were explaining to me and showing me all sorts of things, in such enormous bulk and extent and number!  First I was to see your stables, where the cows were kept.  A trillion of cows!—­that was what you told me.  And on the way we went down among such wood-piles!—­whole forests cut up into kindlings and built into solid walls that reached up till the sky looked like a thread of blue sewing-silk between.  And presently we came to a kind of opening and turned off to see the laundry