Washington was greatly pleased with the Sellers mansion.  It was a two-story-and-a-half brick, and much more stylish than any of its neighbors.  He was borne to the family sitting room in triumph by the swarm of little Sellerses, the parents following with their arms about each other’s waists.

The whole family were poorly and cheaply dressed; and the clothing, although neat and clean, showed many evidences of having seen long service.  The Colonel’s “stovepipe” hat was napless and shiny with much polishing, but nevertheless it had an almost convincing expression about it of having been just purchased new.  The rest of his clothing was napless and shiny, too, but it had the air of being entirely satisfied with itself and blandly sorry for other people’s clothes.  It was growing rather dark in the house, and the evening air was chilly, too.  Sellers said: 

“Lay off your overcoat, Washington, and draw up to the stove and make yourself at home—­just consider yourself under your own shingles my boy —­I’ll have a fire going, in a jiffy.  Light the lamp, Polly, dear, and let’s have things cheerful just as glad to see you, Washington, as if you’d been lost a century and we’d found you again!”

By this time the Colonel was conveying a lighted match into a poor little stove.  Then he propped the stove door to its place by leaning the poker against it, for the hinges had retired from business.  This door framed a small square of isinglass, which now warmed up with a faint glow.  Mrs. Sellers lit a cheap, showy lamp, which dissipated a good deal of the gloom, and then everybody gathered into the light and took the stove into close companionship.

The children climbed all over Sellers, fondled him, petted him, and were lavishly petted in return.  Out from this tugging, laughing, chattering disguise of legs and arms and little faces, the Colonel’s voice worked its way and his tireless tongue ran blithely on without interruption; and the purring little wife, diligent with her knitting, sat near at hand and looked happy and proud and grateful; and she listened as one who listens to oracles and, gospels and whose grateful soul is being refreshed with the bread of life.  Bye and bye the children quieted down to listen; clustered about their father, and resting their elbows on his legs, they hung upon his words as if he were uttering the music of the spheres.

A dreary old hair-cloth sofa against the wall; a few damaged chairs; the small table the lamp stood on; the crippled stove—­these things constituted the furniture of the room.  There was no carpet on the floor; on the wall were occasional square-shaped interruptions of the general tint of the plaster which betrayed that there used to be pictures in the house—­but there were none now.  There were no mantel ornaments, unless one might bring himself to regard as an ornament a clock which never came within fifteen strokes of striking the right time, and whose hands always hitched together at twenty-two minutes past anything and traveled in company the rest of the way home.