back, she took a survey of the building in silence. Then she turned slowly
around, and, facing Mercy, said in a droll, dry way, not uncommon with
her,--

"'Bijah Jenkins's barn!"

Mercy laughed outright.

"So it is, mother. I hadn't thought of it. It looks just like that old
barn of Deacon Jenkins's."

"Yes," said Mrs. Carr. "That's it, exzackly. Well, I never thought o'
offerin' to hire a barn to live in afore, but I s'pose 't'll do till we
can look about. Mebbe we can do better."

"But we've taken it for a year, mother," said Mercy, a little dismayed.

"Oh, hev we? Well, well, I daresay it's comfortable enough; so the sun
shines in mornin's, thet's the most I care for. You'll make any kind o'
house pooty to look at inside, an' I reckon we needn't roost on the fences
outside, a-lookin' at it, any more'n we choose to. It does look, for all
the world though, like 'Bijah Jenkins's old yaller barn; 'n' thet there
jog's jest the way he jined on his cow-shed. I declare it's too
redicklus." And the old lady laughed till she had to wipe her spectacles.

"It could be made very pretty, I think," said Mercy, "for all it is so
hideous now. I know just what I'd do to it, if it were mine. I'd throw
out a big bay window in that corner where the jog is, and another on the
middle of the north side, and then run a piazza across the west side, and
carry the platform round both the bay windows. I saw a picture of a house