ay the neighbors called and inquired of her if
Jackson had gone off his head, or what was the matter. His flaming
porch outraged Durford's sense of decency. She was at her wits end to
answer, without actually lying or compromising herself; so the only
thing she said was that she had noticed that he had been acting a bit
peculiar lately, now they mentioned it. As time went on, the scarlet
porch became the talk of the town. It was duly discussed at the sewing
society, and the reading club, and the general sentiment was
practically unanimous that Jackson must be suffering from incipient
cataract or senile dementia, and needed a guardian. Even Mary McGuire
remarked to Mrs. Burke that she was afraid "that there front porch
would sure set the house on fire, if it wasn't put out before."
Everybody agreed that if his wife had lived, the thing never could
have happened.

Meantime, Jonathan went about his daily business, serene and happy,
apparently oblivious of the fact that there was anything unusual in
the decoration of his house. When his friends began to chaff him about
the porch he seemed surprised, and guessed it was his privilege to
paint his house any color he had a mind to, and there was no law
ag'in' it; it was nobody's business but his own. Tastes in color
differed, and there was no reason in the world why all houses should
be painted alike. He liked variety himself, and nobody could say that
scarlet wasn't a real cheerful color on a white house.

Occasionally people who were driving by stopped to contemplate the
porch; and the Durford Daily _Bugle_ devoted a long facetious
paragraph to the matter. All of which Mrs. Burke knew very well, and
it was having its effect on her nerves. The porch was the most
conspicuous object in view from Hepsey's sitting-room windows, and
every time she entered the room she found herself looking at the
flaming terror with increasing exasperation. Verily, if Jonathan
wanted revenge he was getting far more than he knew: the biter was
badly bit. The matter came to a crisis one day, when Jonathan
concluded a discussion with Mrs. Burke about the pasture fence. She
burst out abruptly:

"Say, Jonathan Jackson, why in the name of conscience don't you paint
your porch a Christian color? It's simply awful, and I'm not goin' to
sit in my house and have to look at it all winter."

Jonathan did not seem greatly stirred, and replied in an absent-minded
way:

"Why don't you move your sittin' roo