the house. I'll find out."

"Deacon Jones said he thought, taking in the cranberry meadow, it was
worth three thousand dollars," said Mercy; "but that seems a great deal to
me: though not in a good cranberry year, perhaps," added she, ingenuously,
"for last year the cranberries brought us in seventy-five dollars, besides
paying for the picking."

"And the meadow ought to go with the house, by all means," said Mr. Allen.
"I want it for color in the background, when I look at the house as I
come down from the meeting-house hill. I wouldn't like to have anybody
else own the canvas on which the picture of my home will be oftenest
painted for my eyes. I'll give you three thousand dollars for the house,
Mercy. I can only pay two thousand down, and pay you interest on the other
thousand for a year or two. I'll soon clear it off. Will that do?"

"Oh, thank you, thank you, Mr. Allen. It will more than do," said poor
Mercy, who could not believe in such sudden good fortune; "but do you
think you ought to buy it so quick? Perhaps it wouldn't bring so much
money as that. I had not asked anybody except Deacon Jones."

Mr. Allen laughed. "If you don't look out for yourself sharper than this,
Mercy," he said, "in the new place 'where you're going to live, you'll
fare badly. Perhaps it may be true, as you say, that nobody else would
give you three thousand dollars for the house, because nobody might happen
to want to live in it. But Deacon Jones knows better than anybody else the
value of property here, and I am perfectly willing to give you the price
he set on the place. I had laid by this two thousand dollars towards my
house; and I could not build such a house as this, to-day, for three
thousand dollars. But really, Mercy, you must look 'out for yourself