rst load. "I ain't lived in town very long, or I should known
it afore. It's in the paper."

Mr. Blake frowned slightly and seemed to freeze all over the surface he
presented to the world. He walked away without a reply, but Lydia, who
had not heard, came up at this point to ask Denny if he knew where she
could find a maid.

"Sure I do," said Denny, who was not Irish but consorted with common
speech. "My wife's two sisters, Mary Nellen, Prince Edward girls."

"We don't want two," said Lydia. "My sister and I do a lot of the work."

"The two of them," said Denny, "come for the price of one. They're
studyin' together to set up a school in Canada, and they can't be
separated. They'd admire to be with nice folks."

"Mary? did you say?" asked Lydia.

"Mary Nellen."

"Mary and Ellen?"

"Yes, Mary Nellen. I'll send 'em up."

That afternoon they came, pleasant-faced square little trudges with
shiny black hair and round myopic eyes. This near-sightedness when they
approached the unclassified, resulted in their simultaneously making up
the most horrible faces, the mere effort of focusing. Mary Nellen--for
family affection, recognising their complete twin-ship, always blended
them--were aware of this disfiguring habit, but relegated the curing of
it to the day of their future prosperity. They couldn't afford glasses
now, they said. They'd rather put their money into books. This according
and instantaneous grimace Lydia found engaging. She could not possibly
help hiring them, and they appeared again that night with two battered
tin boxes and took up residence in the shed chamber.

There had been some consultation about the disposition of chambers. It
resolved itself into the perfectly reasonable conclusion that the
colonel must have the one he had always slept in, the southeastern
corner.

"But there's one," said Lydia, "that's sweeter than the whole house put
together. Have you fallen in love with it, Anne? It's that low, big room
back of the stairs. You go down two steps into it. There's a grape-vine
over the window. Whose chamber is that, Farvie?"

He stood perfectly still by the mantel, and the old look of
introspective pain, almost of a surprised terror, crossed his face. Then
they knew. But he delayed only a minute or so in answering.

"Why," said he, "that was Jeff's room when he lived at home."

"Then," said Anne, in her assuaging voice, "he must have it again."

"Yes," said the colonel. "I think you'd bet