This explanation should have been satisfying, doubtless, but Barbara did not seem to find it wholly so.

“Please may I ask one more question, Mamma?” she pleaded.  “Just only one?”

She asked it before her mother could reply.

“How does putting your hands in your pockets help you think, Mr. Winslow?” she asked.  “I don’t see how it would help a bit?”

Jed’s eye twinkled, but his reply was solemnly given.

“Why, you see,” he drawled, “I’m built a good deal like the old steam launch Tobias Wixon used to own.  Every time Tobias blew the whistle it used up all the steam and the engine stopped.  I’ve got a head about like that engine; when I want to use it I have to give all the rest of me a layoff. . . .  Here we are, ma’am.  Walk right in, won’t you.”

He showed them through room after room of the little house, opening the closed shutters so that the afternoon sunlight might stream in and brighten their progress.  The rooms were small, but they were attractive and cosy.  The furniture was almost all old mahogany and in remarkably good condition.  The rugs were home-made; even the coverlets of the beds were of the old-fashioned blue and white, woven on the hand looms of our great-grandmothers.  Mrs. Armstrong was enthusiastic.

“It is like a miniature museum of antiques,” she declared.  “And such wonderful antiques, too.  You must have been besieged by people who wanted to buy them.”

Jed nodded.  “Ye-es,” he admitted, “I cal’late there’s been no less’n a million antiquers here in the last four or five year.  I don’t mean here in the house—­I never let ’em in the house—­but ’round the premises.  Got so they kind of swarmed first of every summer, like June bugs.  I got rid of ’em, though, for a spell.”

“Did you; how?”

He rubbed his chin.  “Put up a sign by the front door that said:  ‘Beware of Leprosy.’  That kept ’em away while it lasted.”

Mrs. Armstrong laughed merrily.  “I should think so,” she said.  “But why leprosy, pray?”

“Oh, I was goin’ to make it smallpox, but I asked Doctor Parker if there was anything worse than smallpox and he said he cal’lated leprosy was about as bad as any disease goin’.  It worked fine while it lasted, but the Board of Health made me take it down; said there wan’t any leprosy on the premises.  I told ’em no, but ’twas a good idea to beware of it anyhow, and I’d put up the sign just on general principles.  No use; they hadn’t much use for principles, general or otherwise, seemed so.”

The lady commented on the neatness and order in the little rooms.  They were in marked contrast to the workshop.  “I suppose you have a woman come here to clean and sweep,” she said.

Jed shook his head.

“No-o,” he answered.  “I generally cal’late to come in every little while and clean up.  Mother was always a great one for keepin’ things slicked up,” he added, apologetically, “and I—­I kind of like to think ’twould please her.  Foolish, I presume likely, but—­ well, foolish things seem to come natural to me.  Got a kind of a gift for ’em, as you might say.  I . . .”