Why, did you not know you were on your own stone wall? There is the
house;" and Mercy, following the gesture of his hand, saw, not more than
twenty rods beyond the spot where she had been sitting, a shabby, faded,
yellow wooden house, standing in a yard which looked almost as neglected
as the orchard, from which it was only in part separated by a tumbling
stone wall.

Mercy did not speak. Stephen watched her face in silence for a moment;
then he laughed constrainedly, and said,--

"Don't be afraid, Mrs. Philbrick, to say outright that it is the
dismallest old barn you ever saw. That's just what I had said about it
hundreds of times, and wondered how anybody could possibly live in it. But
necessity drove us into it, and I suppose necessity has brought you to it,
too," added Stephen, sadly.

Mercy did not speak. Very deliberately her eyes scanned the building. An
expression of scorn slowly gathered on her face.

"It is not so forlorn inside as it is out," said Stephen. "Some of the
rooms are quite pleasant. The south rooms in your part of the house are
very cheerful."

Mercy did not speak. Stephen went on, beginning to be half-angry with this
little, unknown woman from Cape Cod, who looked with the contemptuous
glance of a princess upon the house in which he and his mother dwelt,--

"You are quite at liberty to throw up your lease, Mrs. Philbrick, if you
choose. It was, perhaps, hardly fair to have let you hire the house
without seeing it."