last March--he left
everything to Calthea, and the store with the rest. Before he died he
told her what he had done, and advised her to sell out the stock, and
put the money into somethin' that would pay good interest, and this she
agreed to do, and this she is doing now. She wouldn't consent to no
auction, for she knew well enough the things wouldn't bring more 'n half
they cost, so she undertook herself to sell 'em all out at retail, just
as her father intended they should be sold when he bought 'em. Well,
it's took her a long while, and, in the opinion of most folks, it'll
take her a long while yit. You see she don't lay in no new goods, but
just keeps on sellin' or tryin' to sell what she's got on hand.

"It was purty easy to get rid of the groceries, and the iron and wooden
things got themselves sold some way or other; but old dry-goods, with
never any new ones to lighten 'em up, is about as humdrum as old people
without youngsters in the family. Now it stands to reason that when a
person goes into a store and sees nothin' but old calicoes, and some
other odds and ends, gettin' mustier and dustier and a little more
fly-specked every time, and never a new thing, even so much as a spool
of cotton thread, then persons isn't likely to go often into that store,
specially when there's a new one in the village that keeps up to the
times.

"Now that's Calthea Rose's way of doin' business. She undertook to sell
out them goods, and she's goin' to keep on till she does it. She is
willin' to sell some of the worst-lookin' things at cost, but not a cent
below that, for if she does, she loses money, and that isn't Calthea
Rose. I guess, all put together, she hasn't sold more 'n ten dollars'
worth of goods this year, and most of them was took by the Greek, though
what he wants with 'em is more 'n I know."

"I am sorry to hear that there are no guests at the Squirrel Inn," was
Mrs. Cristie's only reply to this information.

"Oh, you needn't give yourself no trouble about loneliness and that sort
of thing," said the elderly woman; "before to-morrow night the whole
house may be crowded from cockloft to potato-cellar. It never has been
yit, but there's no tellin' what Stephen Petter has a-brewin' in his
mind."

V

THE LANDLORD AND HIS INN

Stephen Petter was a man of middle age, who had been born on a farm, and
who, apparently, had been destined to farm a farm. But at the age of
thirty, having come into a moderate i