cross a running gutter.

"Betsy Gough," said she, "I am thinking."

Mrs. Gough was struck dumb by an announcement so singular.

"I have heard, and I have read, that great and pious and learned men are
often to seek in little simple things, such as plain bodies have at
their fingers' ends. So, now, if you and I could only teach him
something for all he has taught us! And, to be sure, we ought to be kind
to him if we can; for O Betty, my woman, 't is a poor vanity to go and
despise the great, and the learned, and the sainted, because forsooth
we find them out in some one little weakness,--we that are all made up
of weaknesses and defects. So, now, I sit me down in his very chair, so.
And sit you there. Now let us, you and me, look at his room quietly, all
over, and see what is wanting."

* * * * *

"First and foremost methinks this window should be filled with geraniums
and jessamine and so forth. With all his learning perhaps he has to be
taught, the color of flowers and golden green leaves, with the sun
shining through, how it soothes the eye and relieves the spirits; yet
every woman born knows that. Then do but see this bare table! a purple
cloth on that, I say."

"Which he will fling it out of the window, I say."

"Nay, for I'll embroider a cross in the middle with gold braid. Then a
rose-colored blind would not be amiss; and there must be a good mirror
facing the window; but, indeed, if I had my way, I'd paint these horrid
walls the first thing."

"How you run on, dame! Bless your heart, you'd turn his den into a
palace; he won't suffer that. He is all for self-mortification, poor
simple soul."

"O, not all at once, I did not mean," said Mrs. Gaunt; "but by little
and little, you know. We must begin with the flowers: God made them; and
so to be sure he will not spurn _them_."

Betty began to enter into the plot. "Ay, ay," said she: "the flowers
first; and so creep on. But naught will avail to make a man of him so
long as he eats but of eggs and garden-stuff, like the beasts of the
field, 'that to-day are, and to-morrow are cast into the oven.'"

Mrs. Gaunt smiled at this ambitious attempt of the widow to apply
Scripture. Then she said, rather timidly, "Could you make his eggs into
omelets? and so pound in a little meat with your small herbs; I dare say
he would be none the wiser, and he so bent on high and heavenly things."

"You may take your oath of that."

"Well, then