is so kind of--of funny."

Often, in earlier conversations with her housemaid, Miss Phipps had
agreed that her lodger was, to say the least, "funny"; but now she
seemed to resent the word.

"Humph!" she observed, crisply, "if he is, I presume likely he has the
right to be. And I know this, if there were more 'funny' people like
him in this world it would be a big improvement. Primmie, go and do your
sweepin'."

CHAPTER XIV

With the end of the following week spring came in earnest to Gould's
Bluffs, not yet as a steady boarder--spring in New England is a young
lady far too fickle for that--but to make the first of her series of
ever-lengthening visits. Galusha found her, indeed, a charming young
person. His walks now were no longer between snowdrifts or over frozen
fields and hills. Those hills and fields were still bare and brown, of
course, but here and there, in sheltered hollows, tiny bits of new green
began to show. In April, by disturbing the layers of dead leaves and
sodden vegetation through which these hints of greenness peeped, one was
likely to come upon fragrant treasures, the pink and white blossoms of
the trailing arbutus.

There was a superfluity of mud, of course, and as Miss Phipps often
informed him, Galusha's boots and lower trouser legs were "sights to
see" when he came back from those walks. He expressed contrition and
always proclaimed that he should be much more careful in future--much
more, yes. But he was not, nor did he care greatly. He was feeling quite
well again, better than he had felt for years, and spring was in his
middle-aged blood and was rejuvenating him, just as it was rejuvenating
the world and its creatures about him, including Lucy Larcom, Martha's
ancient and rheumatic Thomas cat. Lucy--an animal as misnamed as
Primmie's "Aunt Lucifer"--instead of slumbering peacefully and
respectably in his cushioned box in the kitchen, which had been his
custom of winter nights, now refused to come in at bedtime, ignored his
mistress' calls altogether, and came rolling home in the morning with
slit ears and scarred hide and an air of unrepentant and dissipated
abandon.

Galusha, inspecting the prodigal's return one morning, observed: "Luce,
when I first met you, you reminded me strongly of my Aunt Clarissa. The
air of--ah--dignity and respectable disapproval with which you looked me
over was much like hers. But now--now, if you wore a hat on one side and
an--ah--exuberant waistco