Half an hour later, Ralph, having seen Miss Nancy Sawyer’s machinery of warm baths and simple remedies safely in operation, and having seen the roan colt comfortably stabled, and rewarded for his faithfulness by a bountiful supply of the best hay and the promise of oats when he was cool—­half an hour later Ralph was doing the most ample, satisfactory, and amazing justice to his Aunt Matilda’s hot buckwheat-cakes and warm coffee.  And after his life in Flat Creek, Aunt Matilda’s house did look like paradise.  How white the table-cloth, how bright the coffee-pot, how clean the wood-work, how glistening the brass door-knobs, how spotless everything that came under the sovereign sway of Mrs. Matilda White!  For in every Indiana village as large as Lewisburg, there are generally a half-dozen women who are admitted to be the best housekeepers.  All others are only imitators.  And the strife is between these for the pre-eminence.  It is at least safe to say that no other in Lewisburg stood so high as an enemy to dirt, and as a “rat, roach, and mouse exterminator,” as did Mrs. Matilda White, the wife of Ralph’s maternal uncle, Robert White, Esq., a lawyer in successful practice.  Of course no member of Mrs. White’s family ever stayed at home longer than was necessary.  Her husband found his office—­which he kept in as bad a state as possible in order to maintain an equilibrium in his life—­much more comfortable than the stiffly clean house at home.  From the time that Ralph had come to live as a chore-boy at his uncle’s, he had ever crossed the threshold of Aunt Matilda’s temple of cleanliness with a horrible sense of awe.  And Walter Johnson, her son by a former marriage, had—­poor, weak-willed fellow!—­been driven into bad company and bad habits by the wretchedness of extreme civilization.  And yet he showed the hereditary trait, for all the genius which Mrs. White consecrated to the glorious work of making her house too neat to be habitable, her son Walter gave to tying exquisite knots in his colored cravats and combing his oiled locks so as to look like a dandy barber.  And she had no other children.  The kind Providence that watches over the destiny of children takes care that very few of them are lodged in these terribly clean houses.

But Walter was not at the table, and Ralph had so much anxiety lest his absence should be significant of evil, that he did not venture to inquire after him as he sat there between Mr. and Mrs. White disposing of Aunt Matilda’s cakes with an appetite only justified by his long morning’s ride and the excellence of the brown cakes, the golden honey, and the coffee, enriched, as Aunt Matilda’s always was, with the most generous cream.  Aunt Matilda was so absorbed in telling of the doings of the Dorcas Society that she entirely forgot to be surprised at the early hour of Ralph’s arrival.  When she had described the number of the garments finished to be sent to the Five Points Mission, or the Home for the Friendless, or the South Sea Islands, I forget which, Ralph thought he saw his chance, while Aunt Matilda was in a benevolent mood, to broach a plan he had been revolving for some time.  But when he looked at Aunt Matilda’s immaculate—­horribly immaculate—­housekeeping, his heart failed him, and he would have said nothing had she not inadvertently opened the door herself.