ssession of the duplicate key.

"Lor'," he thought, "but how I pity them husbands of her'n. Bet their
graves felt good when they got into 'em, the hull seven graves. What with
sneerin' at medicines and things a person eats, it must have been awful,
not to mention stealin' of keys and a-lockin' 'em in nights. S'pose the
house had got afire, where'd I be now?" Grasping his treasure closely,
Uncle Israel blew out his candle and tottered to bed, thereafter sleeping
the sleep of the just.

Mrs. Dodd detected subdued animation in his demeanour when he appeared at
breakfast the following morning, and wondered what had occurred.

"You look 's if sunthin' pleasant had happened, Israel," she began in a
sprightly manner.

"Sunthin' pleasant has happened," he returned, applying himself to his
imitation coffee with renewed vigour. "I disremember when I've felt so
good about anythin' before."

"Something pleasant happens every day," put in Elaine. The country air had
made roses bloom on her pale cheeks. Her blue eyes had new light in them,
and her golden hair fairly shone. She was far more beautiful than the sad,
frail young woman who had come to the Jack-o'-Lantern not so many weeks
before.

"How optimistic you are!" sighed Mr. Perkins, who was eating Mrs.
Smithers's crisp, hot rolls with a very unpoetic appetite. "To me, the
world grows worse every day. It is only a few noble souls devoted to the
Ideal and holding their heads steadfastly above the mire of commercialism
that keep our so-called civilisation from becoming an absolute hotbed of
greed--yes, a hotbed of greed," he repeated, the words sounding
unexpectedly well.

"Your aura seems to have a purple tinge this morning," commented Dorothy,
slyly.

"What's a aura, ma?" demanded Willie, with an unusual thirst for
knowledge.

"Something that goes with a soft person, Willie, dear," responded Mrs.
Holmes, quite audibly. "You know there are some people who have no
backbone at all, like the jelly-fish we saw at the seashore the year
before dear papa died."

"I've knowed folks," continued Mrs. Dodd, taking up the wandering thread
of the discourse, "what was so soft when they was little that their mas
had to carry 'em around in a pail for fear they'd slop over and spile the
carpet."

"And when they grew up, too," Dick ventured.

"Some people," said Harlan, in a polite attempt to change the
conversation, "never grow up at all. Their minds remain at a fixed point.
We al