e carried, to "Elaine's board."

Miss St. Clair had never thought of offering compensation, and no one
suggested it to her, but Dick privately determined to make good the
deficiency, sure that a woman married to "a writing chump" would soon be
in need of ready money if not actually starving at the time. That people
should pay for what Harlan wrote seemed well-nigh incredible. Besides,
though Dick had never read that "love is an insane desire on the part of a
man to pay a woman's board bill for life," he took a definite satisfaction
out of this secret expenditure, which he did not stop to analyse.

He brought back full price for everything he took to the "repair-shop," as
he had irreverently christened the sanitarium, though he seldom sold much.
On the other side of the hill he had a small but select graveyard where he
buried such unsalable articles as he could not eat. His appetite was
capricious, and Dorothy had frequently observed that when he came back
from the long walk to the sanitarium, he ate nothing at all.

He established a furniture factory under a spreading apple tree at a
respectable distance from the house, and began to remodel the black-walnut
relics which were evidence of his kinsman's poor taste. He took many a bed
apart, scraped off the disfiguring varnish, sandpapered and oiled the
wood, and put it together in new and beautiful forms. He made several
tables, a cabinet, a bench, half a dozen chairs, a set of hanging shelves,
and even aspired to a desk, which, owing to the limitations of the
material, was not wholly successful.

Dorothy and Elaine sat in rocking-chairs under the tree and encouraged him
while he worked. One of them embroidered a simple design upon a burlap
curtain while the other read aloud, and together they planned a shapely
remodelling of the Jack-o'-Lantern. Fortunately, the woodwork was plain,
and the ceilings not too high.

"I think," said Elaine, "that the big living room with the casement
windows will be perfectly beautiful. You couldn't have anything lovelier
than this dull walnut with the yellow walls."

Whatever Mrs. Carr's thoughts might be, this simple sentence was usually
sufficient to turn the current into more pleasant channels. She had
planned to have needless partitions taken out, and make the whole lower
floor into one room, with only a dining-room, kitchen, and pantry back of
it. She would take up the unsightly carpets, over which impossible plants
wandered persis