be a hoax for all you know. Better wait till the money's in your
hand before you run into extravagance piling up debts for us to work
off later. I guess it's a true saying that if you put a beggar on
horseback, he'll ride to the devil."

Within a week the innovations had reduced him to a condition of
disapproving dumbness. Paperhangers and plasterers had taken
possession of the old house. The roof was being reshingled. The new
electric lights gave to each successive evening an air of festive
brilliancy. The sagging porch was in process of reconstruction. It
was the dull season from the builder's standpoint, and Persis had no
difficulty in securing workmen in sufficient numbers to hurry the work
with what seemed to herself, as well as to Joel, almost magical
despatch. A generous check deposited to her credit in the Clematis
Savings Bank had relieved Joel's earlier apprehensions. The bequest
was no hoax. But his constitutional parsimony rebelled against the
outlay as if each expenditure had meant want in the future. While his
dignity demanded that he should cease the protests that were
disregarded, his air of patient martyrdom expressed his sentiments with
all the plainness of speech.

The feminine half of the population of Clematis was in despair. For
Persis Dale had announced with every indication of finality that after
she had finished the gowns in hand, her career as dressmaker would
immediately terminate. Mrs. Robert Hornblower, bitter because Persis'
fortune had materialized before her own, commented freely on the fact
that Persis Dale hadn't the strength of mind to come into money without
beginning to put on airs. Mrs. Richards, who was so far convalescent
that she had been able to attend divine worship the previous Sabbath,
rolled her eyes Heavenward and deplored the effects of pomps and
vanities on certain constitutions. Even so true and tried a friend as
Mrs. West was driven to remonstrate.

"I don't say that you ought to work the way you've done all your life,
Persis, rushing from one dress to another, fit to break your neck. But
it does seem as if after always being busy you couldn't be real happy
to settle down to idleness."

Persis smiled.

"I guess I wasn't cut out for a butterfly, Mis' West, even if I'd got
started in time. I'm not afraid but what I can find plenty to do. As
far as the sewing goes, I feel like a man I read of who laid a wager
he'd eat a quail a day for thirty days.