It looked like a house where there were a grandfather and a grandmother;
where holidays were warmly kept; where there were boisterous family
reunions to which uncles and aunts, who had been born there, would
return from no matter what distances; a house where big turkeys would be
on the table often; where one called "the hired man" (and named either
Abner or Ole) would crack walnuts upon a flat-iron clutched between his
knees on the back porch; it looked like a house where they played
charades; where there would be long streamers of evergreen and dozens of
wreaths of holly at Christmas-time; where there were tearful, happy
weddings and great throwings of rice after little brides, from the broad
front steps: in a word, it was the sort of a house to make the hearts of
spinsters and bachelors very lonely and wistful--and that is about as
near as I can come to my reason for thinking it the finest house in
Wainwright.

The moon hung kindly above its level roof in the silence of that October
morning, as I checked my gait to loiter along the picket fence; but
suddenly the house showed a light of its own. The spurt of a match took
my eye to one of the upper windows, then a steadier glow of orange told
me that a lamp was lighted. The window was opened, and a man looked out
and whistled loudly.

I stopped, thinking that he meant to attract my attention; that
something might be wrong; that perhaps some one was needed to go for a
doctor. My mistake was immediately evident, however; I stood in the
shadow of the trees bordering the sidewalk, and the man at the window
had not seen me.

"Boy! Boy!" he called, softly. "Where are you, Simpledoria?"