“No you don’t.  Every carpenter in town has tried his hand on that roof, and made it worse than before.  The only way to make it tight is to re-shingle it all over.  That’ll cost you $67.50, unless the scantling is too rotten to hold the nails, in which case the job’ll cost you $18.75 more.  I guess the rafters are strong enough to hold together a year or two longer.”

I made some excuse to escape the carpenter and his dreadful figures, and he graciously accepted it; doubtless the perfect method in which he did it was the result of frequent interviews with other wretched beings who had leased the miserable house which I had taken into my confidence.  I determined to plead with the landlord, whose name I knew, and I asked a chance acquaintance on the train if he knew where I could find the proprietor of my house.

“Certainly,” said he; “there he is in the opposite seat but one, reading a religious weekly.”

I looked; my heart sank within me, and my body sank into a seat.  A cold-eyed, hatchet-faced man, from whom not even the most eloquent beggar could hope to coax a penny.  Of what use would it be to try to persuade him to spend sixty-seven dollars and fifty cents on something which I had agreed to take care of. Something had to be done, however, so I wasted most of the day in consulting New York roofers.  The conclusion of the whole matter was that I spent about thirty dollars for condemned “flies” from “hospital” tents, and had these drawn tightly over the roof.  When this was done the appearance of the house was such that I longed for an incendiary who would compel me to seek a new residence; but when Sophronia gazed upon the roof she clapped her hands joyfully, and exclaimed: 

“Pierre, it will be almost as nice as living in a tent, to have one on the roof; it looks just the same, you know, until your eyes get down to the edge of it.”

There was at least one comfort in living at Villa Valley:  the people were very intelligent and sociable, and we soon made many pleasant acquaintances.  But they all had something dreadful to suggest about our house.  A doctor, who was a remarkably fine fellow, said he would be glad of my patronage, and didn’t doubt that he would soon have it, unless I had the cellar pumped out at once.  Then Mrs. Blathe, the leader of society in the village, told my wife how a couple who once lived in our cottage always had chills, though no one else at Villa Valley had the remotest idea of what a chill was.  The several coal dealers in the village competed in the most lively manner for our custom, and when I mentioned the matter, in some surprise, to my grocer, he remarked that they knew what houses needed most coal to keep them warm the year through, and worked for custom accordingly.  A deacon, who was sociable but solemn, remarked that some of his most sweetly mournful associations clustered about our cottage—­he had followed several of its occupants to their long homes.