Lombardy poplars, Mr. Denner went into his library, and after stumbling
about to light his lamp, and stirring his fire to have a semblance, at
least, of cheer, he sat down and meditated further on this subject of
Miss Deborah's housekeeping.

It was a dreary room, with lofty ceilings and few and narrow windows. The
house was much lower than the street, and had that piercing chill of
dampness which belongs to houses in a hollow, and the little gentleman
drew so close to the smouldering fire that his feet were inside the
fender.

He leaned forward, and resting his elbows on his knees, propped his
chin on his hands, and stared at the smoke curling heavily up into the
cavernous chimney, where the soot hung long and black. It was very
lonely. Willie Denner, of course, had long ago gone to bed, and unless
the lawyer chose to go into the kitchen for company, where Mary was
reading her one work of fiction. "The Accounts of the Death Beds of
Eminent Saints," he had no one to speak to. Many a time before had he sat
thus, pondering on the solitude of his life, and contrasting his house
with other Ashurst homes. He glanced about his cold bare room, and
thought of the parlor of the Misses Woodhouse. How pleasant it was, how
bright, and full of pretty feminine devices! whereas his library--Mary
had been a hard mistress. One by one the domestic decorations of the
late lady of the house had disappeared. She could not "have things round
a-trapin' dust," Mary said, and her word was law.

"If my little sister had lived," he said, crouching nearer the fire,
and watching a spark catch in the soot and spread over the chimney-back
like a little marching regiment, that wheeled and maneuvered, and then
suddenly vanished, "it would have been different. She would have made