“Well, Nan, we’ve come down to two rooms in very truth, and in an old, old house, too, that will remind you of some of the oldest in the South,” and he drew such a humorous and forlorn picture of their future abode that his wife felt that he had indeed taken her at her word, and that they would scarcely have a place to lay their heads, much less to live in any proper sense; and when she stopped before the quaint and decrepit house without any front door; when she followed her husband up the forlorn stairway to what seemed a side entrance with its most dismal outlook, she believed that the time for fortitude had come, in bitter truth.  The hall was dark to her sun-blinded eyes, as it had been to Mildred’s, yet not so dark but that she saw doors open and felt herself scanned with an unblushing curiosity by slattern-looking women, her near neighbors, and the thought that they were so very near made her shiver.  As for Belle, she did not take pains to hide her disgust.  With a sinking heart and faltering courage the poor gentlewoman mounted the winding stairs, but before she reached the top there was a rush from an open doorway, and Mildred clasped her in close embrace.

“Welcome home!” she cried, in her clear, sweet, girlish voice.

“Home, Millie! what a mockery that word is in this strange, strange place!” she half whispered, half sobbed in her daughter’s ear.

“Courage, mamma.  We promised papa we’d ask nothing better than he could afford,” Mildred murmured.  “Don’t let him see tears—­he has already put Fred down and is turning to welcome you to the best home he can offer.”

Had the rooms been cells only, with but a pallet of straw upon the floors, Mrs. Jocelyn would have responded to that appeal, and she stepped forward resolved to smile and appear pleased with everything, no matter how stifled she might feel for want of space, air, and light.

But when she crossed the threshold into the spacious, sun-lighted room, and looked up at the high ceiling and across its wide area; when she had glanced around and seen on every side the results of the strong spells laid upon stout Mrs. Wheaton by Mildred’s domestic magic, and the dainty touches with which the solid work had been supplemented, her face lighted up with a sweet surprise.

“Oh, oh, how much better this is than you led me to expect!  Is all this really ours?  Can we afford so large a room?  Here are the dear old things, too, with which I first went to housekeeping.”  Then stepping to her husband’s aide she put her arm around his neck as she looked into his eyes and said, “Martin, this is home.  Thank God, it is home-like after all.  With you and the children around me I can be more than content—­I can be very happy in this place.  I feared that we might be too crowded, and that the children might suffer.”

“Of course you didn’t think of yourself, Nan.  Millie’s the good fairy to thank for all this.  The way she and another female divinity have conjured in these rooms the last three days is a matter wholly beyond the masculine mind.”