back in
Little Arcady, but I did breathe a prayer that he might in some early
Greek elysium be indeed "Potts forever." Might it not be? Had not that
other paper on "the message of Emerson" hinted of "compensation" in a
jargon that sounded authoritative?

And now, as I breakfasted, my attention was invited anew to that
fateful, never ending extension of the Potts-made ripples in our little
pool. I was threatened with the loss of my domestic stay; again might I
be forced to the City Hotel's refectory of a thousand blended smells and
spotty table-linen; or even to irksome adventure at the board of the
self-lauded Budd.

There was selfish wonder in my heart as I listened to Clem, who, now
that my second cup of coffee competed with the May blossoms, stood by to
tell me of his worldly advancement and the nearing of a time when Miss
Caroline should come among us to be independent.

His stubborn industry had counted. The vegetable and melon crop of the
year before had been abundant and well sold, despite sundry raids upon
the latter by nameless boys, who, he assured me, "hain't had no raght
raisin'." And he had further swelled that hoard of "reglah gole money"
in Bundy's bank by his performances of house-cleaning, catering, and his
work as janitor; not a little, too, by sales of the fish he caught. He
was believed to possess a secret charm that made his fish-bait
irresistible. Certainly his fortune in this matter was superior to that
of any other frequenter of the bass nooks below the dam.

And now he had waxed so heavy of purse that a woman could come between
us,--a selfish woman, I made no doubt, pampered survival of a pernicious
and now happily destroyed system, who would not only unsettle my
domestic tranquillity, but would, in all likelihood, fetch another alien
ferment into our already sorely tried existence as a town needing
elevation. It seemed, indeed, that we were never to be done with these
consequences.

Separated from my house by a stretch of weedy lawn was a shambling
structure built years before by one Azariah Prouse, who believed among
other strange matters that the earth is flat and that houses are built
higher than one story only at great peril, because of the earth's
proneness to tip if overbalanced. Prouse had compromised with this
belief, however, and made his house a story and a half high, in what I
conceive to have been a dare-devil spirit. The reckless upper rooms were
thus cut off untimely by ceil