nds and a half to a feather, was aired
and sunned three days upon the kitchen roof, the good woman little
dreaming that if the thirty-pounder was used at all, it would do duty
under the hair mattress Ethelyn meant to have. They were to furnish
their own rooms, and whatever expense Mrs. Markham could save her boy
she meant to do. There was the carpet in their chamber--they could have
that; for after they were gone it was not likely the room would be used,
and the old rag one would answer. They could have the curtains, too, if
they liked, with the table and the chairs. Left to himself and his
mother's guidance, Richard would undoubtedly have taken to Camden such a
promiscuous outfit as would have made even a truckman smile; but there
were three women leagued against him, and so draft after draft was drawn
from his funds in the Camden bank until the rooms were furnished; and
one bright morning in early June, a week after Aunt Barbara started for
Chicopee, Ethie bid her husband's family good-by, and turning her back
upon Olney, turned also the first leaf of her life's history in
the West.

CHAPTER XIX

COMING TO A CRISIS

Richard was not happy in his new home; it did not fit him like the old.
He missed his mother's petting; he missed the society of his plain,
outspoken brothers; he missed his freedom from restraint, and he missed
the deference so universally paid to him in Olney, where he was the only
lion. In Camden there were many to divide the honors with him; and
though he was perhaps unconscious of it, he had been first so long that
to be one of many firsts was not altogether agreeable. With the new home
and new associates more like those to which she had been accustomed,
Ethelyn had resumed her training process, which was not now borne as
patiently as in the halcyon days of the honeymoon, when most things wore
the couleur de rose and were right because they came from the pretty
young bride. Richard chafed under the criticisms to which he was so
frequently subjected, and if he improved on them in the least it was not
perceptible to Ethlyn, who had just cause to blush for the careless
habits of her husband--habits which even Melinda observed, when in
August she spent a week with Ethelyn, and then formed one of a party
which went for a pleasure trip to St. Paul and Minnehaha. From this
excursion, which lasted for two weeks, Richard returned to Camden in
anything but an amiable frame of mind. Ethelyn had not please