[Illustration:  THE FIRE (SEE PAGE 748.)]

Dab said nothing for a while, but one day, at dinner, just after the arrival of a letter from Miranda announcing the speedy return of herself and husband, he quietly remarked: 

“Now I can’t sleep in Ham’s room any longer,—­I suppose I’ll have to go out on the roof.  I wont sleep in the garret or in the cellar.”

“That’ll be a good deal as Mrs. Morris says, when she comes,” calmly responded his mother.

“As Miranda says!” said Dab, with a long breath.

“Miranda?” gasped Samantha and her sisters.

“Yes, my dears, certainly,” said their mother.  “This is Mrs. Morris’s house, or her husband’s,—­not mine.  All the arrangements I have made are only temporary.  She and Ham both have ideas and wills of their own.  I’ve only done the best I could for the time being.”

The girls looked at one another in blank amazement over the idea of Mrs. Kinzer being anything less than the mistress of any house she might happen to be in, but Dabney laid down his knife and fork with: 

“It’s all right, then.  If Ham and Miranda are to settle it, I think I’ll take the room Sam has now.  You needn’t take away your books, Sam.  I may want to read some of them or lend them to Annie.  You and Kezi and Meli had better take that upper room back.  The smell of the paint’s all gone now, and there’s three kinds of carpet on the floor.”

“Dabney!” exclaimed Samantha, reproachfully, and with an appealing look at her mother, who, however, said nothing on either side, and was a woman of too much good sense to take any other view of the matter than that she had announced.

Things were all running on smoothly and pleasantly before dinner was over, but Dab’s ideas of the way the house should be divided were likely to result in some changes.  Perhaps not exactly the ones he indicated, but such as would give him a better choice than either the garret, the cellar, or the roof.  At all events, only three days would now intervene before the arrival of the two travelers, and everything required for their reception was pushed forward with all the energy Mrs. Kinzer could bring to bear.  She had promised Ham that his house should be ready for him, and it was likely to be a good deal more “ready” than either he or his wife had dreamed of.

CHAPTER XV.

One of the most troublesome of the annoyances which come to dwellers in the country, within easy reach of the great city, is the kind of patrolling beggar called the “tramp.”  He is of all sorts and sizes, and he goes everywhere, asking for anything he wants, very much as if it belonged to him, so long as he can ask it of a woman or a sickly-looking man.