er ready to devour and sully in every room and
passageway.

Sophie was solemnly warned and instructed by all the mothers and
aunts,--she was warned of moths, warned of cockroaches, warned of
flies, warned of dust; all the articles of furniture had their covers,
made of cold Holland linen, in which they looked like bodies laid
out,--even the curtain tassels had each its little shroud,--and
bundles of receipts, and of rites and ceremonies necessary for the
preservation and purification and care of all these articles, were
stuffed into the poor girl's head, before guiltless of cares as the
feathers that floated above it.

Poor Bill found very soon that his house and furniture were to be kept
at such an ideal point of perfection that he needed another house to
live in,--for, poor fellow, he found the difference between having a
house and a home. It was only a year or two after that my wife and I
started our menage on very different principles, and Bill would often
drop in upon us, wistfully lingering in the cosy armchair between my
writing-table and my wife's sofa, and saying with a sigh how
confoundedly pleasant things looked there,--so pleasant to have a
bright, open fire, and geraniums and roses and birds, and all that
sort of thing, and to dare to stretch out one's legs and move without
thinking what one was going to hit. "Sophie is a good girl!" he would
say, "and wants to have everything right, but you see they won't let
her. They've loaded her with so many things that have to be kept in
lavender that the poor girl is actually getting thin and losing her
health; and then, you see, there's Aunt Zeruah, she mounts guard at
our house, and keeps up such strict police regulations that a fellow
can't do a thing. The parlors are splendid, but so lonesome and
dismal!--not a ray of sunshine, in fact not a ray of light, except
when a visitor is calling, and then they open a crack. They're afraid
of flies, and yet, dear knows, they keep every looking-glass and
picture-frame muffled to its throat from March to December. I'd like,
for curiosity, to see what a fly would do in our parlors!"

"Well," said I, "can't you have some little family sitting-room where
you can make yourselves cosy?"

"Not a bit of it. Sophie and Aunt Zeruah have fixed their throne up in
our bedroom, and there they sit all day long, except at calling-hours,
and then Sophie dresses herself and comes down. Aunt Zeruah insists
upon it that the way is to put