a
permanent camp of dreariness.

"Does Fanny Newt live there?" asked Gabriel, in a tone which indicated
that there might be hearts in which honey was not abundantly hived.

"Yes," said May, gravely. "You know they have very little to live upon,
and--and--oh dear, I don't like to speak of it, Gabriel, but they are
very miserable."

Gabriel said nothing, but rang the bell.

The sloppy servant having stared wildly for a moment at the apparition
of blooming love that had so incomprehensibly alighted upon the steps,
ducked under them, and in a moment reappeared at the door. She seemed
to recognize May, and said "Yes'm" before any question had been asked.

Gabriel and May walked into the little parlor. It was dark and formal.
There was a black haircloth sofa with wooden edges all over it, so that
nobody could lean or lounge, or do any thing but sit uncomfortably
upright. There were black haircloth chairs, a table with two or three
books; two lamps with glass drops upon the mantle; a thin cheap carpet;
gloom, silence, and a complicated smell of grease--as if the ghosts
of all the wretched dinners that had ever been cooked in the house
haunted it spitefully.

While May went up stairs to find Fanny, Gabriel Bennet looked and smelled
around him. He had not believed that a human home could be so dismal, and
he could not understand how haircloth furniture and dimness could make it
so. His father's house was certainly not very large; and it was scantily
and plainly furnished, but no Arabian palace had ever seemed so splendid
to his imagination as that home was dear to his heart. No, it isn't the
furniture nor the smell, thought he. I am quite sure it is something that
I neither see nor smell that makes the difference.

As he sat on the uncomfortable sofa and heard the jangling bells of the
ragman die away into the distance, and the loud, long, mournful whoop of
the chimney-sweep, his fancy was busy with the figures of a thousand
things that might be--of a certain nameless somebody, mistress of that
poor, sombre house, but so lighting it up with grace and gay sweetness
that the hard sofa became the most luxurious lounge, and the cheap table
more gorgeous than ormolu; and of a certain other nameless somebody
coming home at evening--an opening door--a rustle in the hall as of
women's robes--a singular sound as of meeting lips--then a coming
together arm in arm into the dingy furnished little parlor, but with such
a bright fire