me night
he'll take his regular place at your fireside, as he does at your table.
I know your father's soft heart. Yours may not be quite so vulnerable,
but if the boarder should happen to look low in his mind after a
telegram from anywhere, or should get his precious feet wet----"

"Jimps, go home and be sensible. When Jeannette comes--if she does come,
which I doubt more and more--you may be asked over quite a number of
times during her visit."

"I presume so. And that's the time you'll have Jefferson down, and
you'll pair off with him, while I do my prettiest not to look like an
awkward countryman before the lady who has her picture in the Sunday
papers."

"Good-night, James Stuart--good-night."

"Good-night, Georgiana--dear," Stuart responded cheerfully. But the last
word was under his breath.

CHAPTER V

SHABBINESS

"I positively didn't know how shabby the house was till I'd read
Jeannette's letter of acceptance!"

She did not say it to her father--not Georgiana Warne. She said it not
to James Stuart, nor to Mr. E. C. Jefferson. Being Georgiana, she said
it to no one but her slightly daunted self. She was standing in the hall
as she spoke, the wide, plain hall which ran straight through the middle
of the wide, plain house, with its square rooms on either side and its
winding, old-fashioned staircase at the back. Of the house itself,
Georgiana was not in the least ashamed. She knew that it possessed a
certain charm of aspect, from the fanlight over the entrance door to the
big quaint kitchen with its uneven floor dark with time. It was when one
came to details that the charm sordidly vanished--at least to the
critical vision of the young housewife. Like the worn white paint upon
its exterior, the walls and floors within called loudly for a restoring
hand. As for the furnishings, Georgiana looked about her with an
appraising eye which took in all their dinginess. The old rugs and
carpets were so nearly threadbare; the furniture was so worn; the very
muslin curtains at the windows, though white as hands could make them,
had been so many times repaired that even artful draping could not
wholly conceal their deficiencies.

In other ways the household's lack of means made itself plainly apparent
to the daughter of the house, as she went from room to room. The linen
press, for instance--how pitifully low its piles of sheets and towels
had grown! Hardly a sheet but had a patch upon it, hardly a towel bu