“How about the painting?” said Mrs. Wheaton.  “It ought to be painted.”

Miss Moore shook her head.  “So it ought,” she said, “and so I told Mr. Quirk; but he won’t do anything,—­and we can’t afford to paint it; we shouldn’t have money left for furnishing.”

So we took the measure of the floors for the carpets, settled on what furniture we would get, and adjourned.

Next week I went down to New York and called on the young lady to whom Maurice is engaged.  Her home is in New York, or rather it was there; for to my thinking a wife’s home is always with her husband; and I never like to hear a wife talking of “going home” as though home could be anywhere else than where her husband and her children are.  Maurice and Helen were to be married two weeks from the following Friday, for Maurice proposed to postpone their wedding trip till his next summer’s vacation; and Helen, like the dear, sensible girl she is, very readily agreed to that plan.  In fact I believe she proposed it.  She had some shopping to do before the wedding, and I had some to do on my own account, and we went together.  I invented a plan of refurnishing my parlor.  I am afraid I told some fibs, or at least came dreadfully near it.  I told Helen I wanted her to help me select the carpet; and though she had no time to spare, she was very good-natured, and did spare the time.  We ladies had agreed-not without some dissent-to get a Brussels for the parlor, as the cheapest in the end, and I made Helen select her own pattern, without any suspicion of what she was doing, and incidentally got her taste on other carpets, too, so that really she selected them herself without knowing it.  Deacon Goodsole recommended me to go for furniture to Mr. Kabbinett, a German friend of his, and Mrs. Goodsole and I found there a very nice parlor set, in green rep, made of imitation rosewood, which he said would wear about as well as the genuine article, and which we both agreed looked nearly as well.  We would rather have bought the real rosewood, but that we could not afford.  Mr. Kabbinett made us a liberal discount because we were buying for a parsonage.  We got an extension table and chairs for the dining-room, (but we had to omit a side-board for the present), and a very pretty oak set for the chamber.  We did not buy anything but a carpet for the library, for Mr. Laicus said no one could furnish a student’s library for him.  He must furnish it for himself.

When we got back to Wheathedge, Tuesday afternoon, we found the parsonage undergoing transformations so great that you would hardly know it.  Miss Moore had got Mr. Hardcap, sure enough, to repair it.  She had agreed to pay for the material, and he was to furnish the labor.  The fence was straightened, and the gate re-hung, and the blinds mended up, and Mr. Hardcap was on the roof patching it where it leaked or threatened to.  Deacon Goodsole had a bevy of boys from the Sabbath-school at work in the garden