itty. She was a cheerful, whole-souled person, and I
sometimes thought that she was not so unwilling to have me for a
neighbor as the rest of the family seemed to be; for if I were to judge
the disposition of her brother George from what her mother told me
about his letters, both he and Mrs. Carson must be making a great many
plans to get me off the premises.

Nearly a month had now passed since my house and I made that remarkable
morning call upon Mrs. Carson. I was becoming accustomed to my present
mode of living, and, so far as I was concerned, it satisfied me very
well. I certainly lived a great deal better than when I was depending
upon my old negro cook. Miss Kitty seemed to be satisfied with things
as they were, and so, in some respects, did her mother. But the latter
never ceased to give me extracts from some of her son George's letters,
and this was always annoying and worrying to me. Evidently he was not
pleased with me as such a close neighbor to his mother, and it was
astonishing how many expedients he proposed in order to rid her of my
undesirable proximity.

"My son George," said Mrs. Carson, one morning, "has been writing to me
about jack-screws. He says that the greatest improvements have been
made in jack-screws."

"What do you do with them, mother?" asked Miss Kitty.

"You lift houses with them," said she. "He says that in large cities
they lift whole blocks of houses with them and build stories
underneath. He thinks that we can get rid of our trouble here if we
use jack-screws."

"But how does he propose to use them?" I asked.

"Oh, he has a good many plans," answered Mrs. Carson. "He said that he
should not wonder if jack-screws could be made large enough to lift
your house entirely over mine and set it out in the road, where it
could be carried away without interfering with anything, except, of
course, vehicles which might be coming along. But he has another
plan--that is, to lift my house up and carry it out into the field on
the other side of the road, and then your house might be carried along
right over the cellar until it got to the road. In that way, he says,
the bushes and trees would not have to be interfered with."

"I think brother George is cracked!" said Kitty.

All this sort of thing worried me very much. My mind was eminently
disposed toward peace and tranquillity, but who could be peaceful and
tranquil with a prospective jack-screw under the very base of his
com