CHAPTER XV.

IN WHICH THERE IS AN INTERESTING MEETING BETWEEN MAJOR POTTER AND
HIS WIFE POLLY.





MAJOR ROGER SHERMAN POTTER lived in a little red house in the
outskirts of the town of Barnstable. There were two crabbed little
windows in front, for it could boast of but one story, and a narrow
green door, over which a prairie rose bush clustered, as if to hide
its infirmity. A small window, reminding one of a half closed
jacknife, and in which were two earthen flower pots containing
mignonnette, set jauntily upon the roof, which was so covered with
black moss, that it was impossible to tell whether it was shingled
or tiled. Indeed such was the shattered condition of the little
tenement, that you might easily have imagined it suffering from a
forty years' attack of chronic disease, and quite unfit for the
habitation of so great a military hero. The major, however, had a
peculiar faculty for reconciling humbleness with greatness, and
always overcame the remonstrances of his wife, (who was continually
urging the necessity of a larger tenement, in accordance with their