They went in.  The front door opened into a minute hall, from which another door led into a back hall with a staircase.  There was a tiny sitting-room, an equally tiny dining-room, a small kitchen, and above, two bedrooms and a sort of unplastered space, which would answer to put trunks in.  That was all, save a little woodshed.  Everything was bare and scanty and rather particularly ugly.  The sitting-room had a frightful paper of mingled mustard and molasses tint, and a matted floor; but there was a good-sized open fireplace for the burning of wood, in which two bricks did duty for andirons, three or four splint and cane bottomed chairs, a lounge, and a table, while the pipe of the large “Morning-glory” stove in the dining-room expanded into a sort of drum in the chamber above.  This secured a warm sleeping place for Phil.  Clover began to think that they could make it do.

Mrs. Kenny, who evidently considered the house as a wonder of luxury and convenience, opened various cupboards, and pointed admiringly to the glass and china, the kitchen tins and utensils, and the cotton sheets and pillow-cases which they respectively held.

“There’s water laid on,” she said; “you don’t have to pump any.  Here’s the washtubs in the shed.  That’s a real nice tin boiler for the clothes,—­I never see a nicer.  Mis Starkey had that heater in the dining-room set the very week before she went away.  ‘Winter’s coming on,’ she says, ‘and I must see about keeping my husband warm;’ never thinking, poor thing, how ’t was to be.”

“Does this chimney draw?” asked the practical Clover; “and does the kitchen stove bake well?”

“First-rate.  I’ve seen Mis Starkey take her biscuits out many a time,—­as nice a brown as ever you’d want; and the chimney don’t smoke a mite.  They kep’ a wood fire here in May most all the time, so I know.”

Clover thought the matter over for a day or two, consulted with Dr. Hope, and finally decided to try the experiment.  No. 13 was taken, and Mrs. Kenny engaged for two days’ work each week, with such other occasional assistance as Clover might require.  She was a widow, it seemed, with one son, who, being employed on the railroad, only came home for the nights.  She was glad of a regular engagement, and proved an excellent stand-by and a great help to Clover, to whom she had taken a fancy from the start; and many were the good turns which she did for love rather than hire for “my little Miss,” as she called her.

To Phil the plan seemed altogether delightful.  This was natural, as all the fun fell to his share and none of the trouble; a fact of which Mrs. Hope occasionally reminded him.  Clover persisted, however, that it was all fair, and that she got lots of fun out of it too, and didn’t mind the trouble.  The house was so absurdly small that it seemed to strike every one as a good joke; and Clover’s friends set themselves to help in the preparations, as if the establishment in Piute Street were a kind of baby-house about which they could amuse themselves at will.