onstrainedly, and said,--

"Don't be afraid, Mrs. Philbrick, to say outright that it is the
dismallest old barn you ever saw. That's just what I had said about it
hundreds of times, and wondered how anybody could possibly live in it. But
necessity drove us into it, and I suppose necessity has brought you to it,
too," added Stephen, sadly.

Mercy did not speak. Very deliberately her eyes scanned the building. An
expression of scorn slowly gathered on her face.

"It is not so forlorn inside as it is out," said Stephen. "Some of the
rooms are quite pleasant. The south rooms in your part of the house are
very cheerful."

Mercy did not speak. Stephen went on, beginning to be half-angry with this
little, unknown woman from Cape Cod, who looked with the contemptuous
glance of a princess upon the house in which he and his mother dwelt,--

"You are quite at liberty to throw up your lease, Mrs. Philbrick, if you
choose. It was, perhaps, hardly fair to have let you hire the house
without seeing it."

Mercy started. "I beg your pardon, Mr. White. I should not think of such a
thing as giving up the lease. I am very sorry you saw how ugly I think the
house. I do think it is the very ugliest house I ever saw," she continued,
speaking with emphatic deliberation; "but, then, I have not seen many
houses. In our village at home, all the houses are low and broad and
comfortable-looking. They look as if they had sat down and leaned back
to take their ease; and they are all neat and clean-looking, and have rows
of flower-beds from the gate to the front door. I never saw a house built
with such a steep angle to its roof as this has," said Mercy, looking up
with the instinctive dislike of a natural artist's eye at the ridgepole of
the old house.

"We have to have our roofs at a sharp pitch, to let the snow slide off in
winter," said Stephen, apologetically, "we have such heavy snows here; but
that doesn't make the angle any less ugly to look at."

"No," said Mercy; and her eyes still roved up and down and over the house,
with not a shadow of relenting in their expression. It was Stephen's turn
to be silent now. He watched her, but did not speak.

Mercy's face was not merely a record of her thoughts: it was a photograph
of them. As plainly as on a written page held in his hand, Stephen White
read the successive phases of thought and struggle which passed through
Mercy's mind for the next five minutes; and he was not in the least
surpr