the times! Doctor of Laws! Well,
all I can say is they _need_ doctorin', an' I'm glad they've got round
to 'em; only Hen Lord ain't the man to do 'em any good."

"What has he done to make him so unpopular?" queried Mrs. Carey.

"Done? He ain't done a thing he'd oughter sence he was born. He keeps
the thou shalt not commandments first rate, Hen Lord does! He neglected
his wife and froze her blood and frightened her to death, poor little
shadder! He give up his position and shut the family up in that tomb of
a house so 't he could study his books. My boy knows his boy, an' I tell
you the life he leads them children is enough to make your flesh creep.
When I git roun' to it I cal'late to set the house on fire some night.
Mebbe I'd be lucky enough to ketch Hen too, an' if so, nobody in the
village'd wear mournin'! So fur, I can't get Maria's consent to be a
cendenary. She says she can't spare me long enough to go to jail; she
needs me to work durin' the summer, an' in the winter time she'd hev
nobody to jaw, if I was in the lockup." This information was delivered
in the intervals of covering the guest chamber walls with a delightful
white moire paper which Osh always alluded to as the "white maria,"
whether in memory of his wife's Christian name or because his French
accent was not up to the mark, no one could say.

Mr. Popham exaggerated nothing, but on the contrary left much unsaid in
his narrative of the family at the House of Lords. Henry Lord, with the
degree of Ph.D. to his credit, had been Professor of Zoology at a New
England college, but had resigned his post in order to write a series of
scientific text books. Always irritable, cold, indifferent, he had grown
rapidly more so as years went on. Had his pale, timid wife been a rosy,
plucky tyrant, things might have gone otherwise, but the only memories
the two children possessed were of bitter words and reproaches on their
father's side, and of tears and sad looks on their mother's part. Then
the poor little shadow of a woman dropped wearily into her grave, and a
certain elderly Mrs. Bangs, with grey hair and firm chin, came to keep
house and do the work.

A lonelier creature than Olive Lord at sixteen could hardly be imagined.
She was a tiny thing for her years, with a little white oval face and
peaked chin, pronounced eyebrows, beautifully arched, and a mass of
tangled, untidy dark hair. Her only interests in life were her younger
brother Cyril, delicate and tim